"No!" Shad yelled. He pulled Chalktalk out of danger, flinging her to the ground, and launched himself at Penn. His fists and feet went clear through the man. Shad could hear Stan Barker's giggle and knew that Penn's partner was somewhere out there in the dark. Shad screamed in anger and terror, and tried to drain the heat from Penn's body. There was scarcely any there, no more than if Penn had been a ghost.

Chalktalk picked herself up and walked impatiently through Penn's body, then turned back to Shad and shrugged. Sanity wedged its way into Shad's panicked mind. He reached out, passed a sword hand through Penn's body. Chalktalk turned away and padded on, her bright lantern held high.

Shad passed his hand through Penn again. His heart drummed against his ribs. There was a deep ache in his throat where the police had given him the tracheotomy that saved his life.

Penn wasn't there. He was an illusion.

Shad watched closely, and he saw that the Penn illusion didn't seem very lifelike-it was huge and distorted, a sixteenyear-old maniac seen through the eyes of his ten-year-old victim.

Chalktalk's lantern was fading into the distance. Shad took a deep breath and followed, his spine tingling as he turned his back on the killer of his family.

Penn didn't follow.

Shad caught up to Chalktalk. His hands were trembling, and his voice shook. "Where the hell are we?" he asked. Chalktalk said nothing, natch. Shad looked around.

He was in Carlsbad Caverns, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Tall formations, lightless passages, the constant drip of water. Formations where illusions of mass murderers lurked. Shad wondered if they were under the high New Mexico desert, until he saw the graffiti, spray-painted on a bright vein of quartz: JUMP THE RICH.

Somehow, Shad knew, he was right where he wanted to be.

Then there was the sound of clattering footsteps, the clank of weaponry. The squawk of a walkie-talkie. It didn't sound much like an illusion.

The locals knew he was here. Shad turned to Chalktalk. "Go back a ways, okay? These are some bad people coming. Maybe you better make a sketch and get yourself out of here."

He looked up at him with shadowed dark eyes, then shrugged, squatted, reached for her chalk.

She walked up the wall, covered himself with darkness, and moved forward along the ceiling. Putting himself between Chalktalk and pursuit.

Shad turned off his lantern and navigated on IR. He entered a chamber twenty feet high, moved forward between limestone columns, and saw jokers, half a dozen, all wearing some kind of informal war-surplus battledress, most carrying M-16 assault rifles. Kafka led them, unmistakable in his brown chitin, holding a walkie-talkie and a four-battery flashlight. He wasn't carrying a weapon. Even in his haste he was careful not to touch any of the other jokers.

Shad remembered he had some kind of contamination phobia.

High-powered flashlights swept the confined area of the stair. Shad deepened the black cloak around him and waited. "No sight of him yet," Kafka reported.

"He's right there." A high-pitched, almost comical voice came out of the hissing walkie-talkie. "He's watching you. And he recognized you from somewhere."

Watching you. The thought rolled through Shad's mind. Someone knew he was here, someone who couldn't see him… Maybe the person who had called Penn into being.

Shad tried to make his mind blank.

"He's onto me," the high-pitched voice warned. "And he can hear you."

Kafka jumped wildly, his flashlight beam dancing. Then he scuttled under the staircase, put his back to the wall. "You and you! Over there!"

Two jokers charged with weapons ready, the sound of their boots echoing.

"He's right there," the high-pitched voice said. "He's right near you."

"That's right," said Shad. He kicked loose from his perch, dropped to Kafka's side, snatched the flashlight. He shone the flash upward into his own face and let the darkness fall away from the part of his body facing Kafka, so that Kafka could see his face and upper body. He let Kafka see his pose, standing upright with his right arm horizontal and bent, hand under his chin, the edge of his hand pressing against his throat.

"Who will help the widow's son?" he asked.

Rifles clattered as they were brought to bear. But Shad was standing too close to Kafka for them to fire, and the other jokers couldn't see what was going on.

Kafka's astonishment was clear, even on his inhuman face. He looked frantically left and right, then leaned closer, his eyes glittering in the light of the flash. "Who are you?"

"A stranger going to the West, to search for that which was lost."

"Where do you come from?"

"From the East."

"What is your task?"

"To trample the Lilies underfoot."

Kafka goggled at him. Shad gave him a severe look. The most difficult trick, he'd found, was to speak all this nonsense with an absolutely straight face.

"Will you not aid me, brother?" he asked. "In the name of the widow's son?"

"Who are you?"

"In the Brotherhood, my name is Gains Gracchus." He pretended to lose patience. "Do I have to do the fucking handshake, or what?"

Kafka seemed puzzled. "I seem to remember the name."

"I've been away for a long time."

"Kafka! Kafka!" The jokers were shuffling, trying to play their flashlights through the darkness that Shad had set up between them. "Are you okay?"

"I'm all right." Kafka tried to peer out past Shad. His mouth parts worked nervously. "What do you want of me?" he asked.

"Nothing. I need to know where the jumpers are quartered."

"Kafka!" The high-pitched voice shouted from the walkie-talkie. "There aren't any Egyptian Masons anymore! You know that as well as anyone. He's just trying to trick you!"

"That is the governor, I take it?" Shad said. "I have no business with him. Just with the jumpers. Will you let me pass or not?"

Kafka hesitated. Shad expanded the darkness that surrounded him, eating photons, surrounding Kafka with night.. The joker guards behind began to scuttle backward from the expanding sphere.

"Kafka," said the governor. "Bring him to me. I will give him an interview"

"I don't know that I need an interview," Shad said. "I don't know that we have a lot to say to each other."

"Yes we do, shad," said the high voice.

Surprise rolled through Shad's mind. No one called him that.

"Yes, I know your name for yourself," the governor said. "And I know more than that, including a few things you don't know" A small pause. "And we have to discuss your friend, little Chalktalk."

" Who?"

The voice turned impatient. "Governor Bloat knows all and sees all, my son. I know you didn't come alone, and I have another group of guards watching your friend. I don't think you have time to interfere with them before they follow any orders I should care to give, particularly if the order is swift and violent."

Indecision fluttered through Shad's mind. He'd been spinning this out with the intention of giving Chalktalk a chance to get away.

Images of Barker and Penn floated through his mind. "How do I know this isn't a trap?" he asked.

"If it is, you can kill me. I know it's within your capabilities. It's a small island, and I'm-" a strange little high-pitched giggle, "I'm not exactly built for running."

Kafka told his troops to return to their quarters. Shad let the darkness fall from Kafka's path. The joker led him down a lengthy stone corridor, then up a surprising staircase, all pink-veined marble like something out of Phantom of the Opera. Once up the stairs, they were in a building. The walls were covered in layers of flaking white paint, and there were doors on either side.

Ellis Island. Beneath which, Shad knew, there was not supposed to be an extensive cavern complex. Things had obviously changed around here.