Nigel: It’s my telltale. You know that, don’t you? Evers: Yes. We just wanted to give you the chance to admit it.

Lubkin: You’re receiving J-27? Directly?

Nigel: No. It’s found some way to sidestep me. Evers: We’ll cut it off then.

So he had to tell them about Alexandria. And beg them to allow the transmissions through JPL. Otherwise she would die.

Stony-jawed, Evers nodded. He would let the beeping thread of life go on. They would even monitor it, eavesdrop, try to decipher what they could. The code was a dense thicket of complexity.

After Nigel had left Evers’s office he could remember little of whatever else was said. Events had become so constricted, so compressed, that he confused people and moments. But he could recall Evers’s calculating bland expression, the pursed lips, the hint of forces finding a new balance.

He sat on the dusty hillside and watched the people streaming into the V of the canyon. Most of them had made the two-hour ride from Mexico City, carrying box lunches. There were bunches from Asia, though, carefully shepherded by guides. And Europeans, identifiable by their brown standard-issue trousers and wooly shirts, severely cut. Separate rivulets which emptied into the canyon.

A flight of birds entered the canyon from the south, fluttering higher as they came. Probably disturbed by the hum of the vast crowd, Nigel thought. He licked his lips. The morning air already shimmered, far warmer than it had been in Kansas two days before. Or had that been Toronto? He had difficulty keeping the days straight. Each of Alexandria’s appearances drew a larger crowd; these, he’d been told, had encamped days in advance.

A hundred meters away men labored to frame up more bleachers. It was pointless; people were sitting on the jutting rock ledges already in immense numbers, far more than last-minute measures could accommodate.

The hills swarmed with life, the ripplings of the throng like cilia on an immense cell. On the narrow floor of the valley the impassioned performed: tumblers, self-flagellators, psi acrobats, chanters with their hollow booming sound, dancers. The annular rings turned. Brimming loving flying dying. Fling. Shout. Moan. Stamp.

At last, the excited babble came. At the head of the canyon a white dot blossomed. Alexandria in her wheel-chair, wrapped in glittering robes. She occupied a platform among the banked rock shelves. Four Immanences flanked her.

“To fullness!” chanted the crowd. “Oneness!” In the sky a winged dot burned orange at one end. Against the pale desert blue a cloud formed. A white sculpture for the occasion: an immense alabaster woman. Wings. Hand raised in greeting, blessing, forgiveness. Alexandria.

Words from an Immanence. Music. Trumpets blared and echoed from the stones. Stamp. Sing. Running living leaping soaring. Salvation in the shimmering, enchanting heat.

He knew the litany well. It washed over him without effect. He was numb from following her. He knew he should leave but he could not give up when he could still stay close, still see her in the distance. A white dot. The walking, talking dead. Come and see. Have your hopes raised. Regain your faith. Joyful singing love forever.

And yet, and yet…he envied her. And loved her.

He grimaced.

Her voice suddenly rolled down the canyon, booming, silencing the mob. She spoke of Him, the One, and how He saw through each of us. Of a vision—

She crumpled. Something banged the microphone. A man shouted hoarsely. Nigel squinted and could make out a knot of robed, milling figures clustered where Alexandria had stood the moment before. Shrill voices called out orders.

She was going at last. Woodenly he stood, brushed away dust from his pants, staring fixedly ahead. Going. Going.

In his room in Mexico City he let the 3D play while he showered and packed. A short balding man, pink skin, fleshy cheeks, said that Alexandria had suffered a relapse but had not yet joined the Essential One, as she herself had predicted she soon would.

His telephone rang.

“Walmsley? That you?” Evers’s voice was high and ragged. Nigel grunted a reply.

“Listen, we just heard the news. Sorry, and all that, but it looks like she’s dying. We know you’ve been following her. Security’s tracked you. Have you been able to find out what she’s told the New Sons? I mean, about J-27?”

“Nothing. As far as I can tell.”

“Ah. Good. I’ve gotten word from higher up to be pretty damned sure nothing gets out. Particularly not to those… well, it looks okay, then. We’ll—”

“Evers.”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t cut the second channel. She isn’t dead yet. If you do, I’ll tell the Three-Ds about… J-27.”

“You’re …” Evers’s voice cut off as though a hand had cupped over the speaker. In a moment Evers said, “Okay.”

“Keep it on indefinitely. Even if you hear she’s dead.” “Okay, Walmsley, but—”

“Goodbye.”

For a long time he stood at the hotel window and watched pedicabs lace through the lanes of the Paseo de la Reforma, mostly the late crowd streaming out of Chapultepec Park. The hivelike comings and goings of man.

So he had made one last gesture, threatened Evers. Perhaps kept her alive a few more hours or days. For what? He knew he would never see her again. Only the New Sons would relish those last moments of her.

So… back to JPL? Begin over? The Snark still waited.

Eventually, yes. He needed to know. Always the clean and sure, the definite; that’s what he sought. To know. Something that Shirley, and perhaps even Alexandria, had never quite understood.

Or…

He fluxed the window and a seam parted in the middle. At least two hundred meters down. Into a pool of racing yellow headlights. Compressing lines, snuffing him out like a candle burned too low.

He looked down for long moments.

Then turned. Picked up his bags and took the shuttle down to the lobby. He checked out, smiling stiffly, tipped a porter, left his bags and went out onto the sidewalk. Soft air greeted him. He shoved his hands into his pockets and decided to take a walk around the block, to clear his head.

From his pocket he took a wedge of plastic. It contained microminiature electronics, a power source and transducer. He clipped it into a holder beneath his collar and made sure it did not show. It rubbed as he walked.

He wanted to be in the open when he tried this. A building might shield the signal at these distances, or blur it. He could take no chances. When Alexandria died, the Snark could still use the channel…

He reached behind his ear and pressed. The telltale hummed into life. The bit of plastic and electronics he’d had made at such expense rubbed his neck. He pressed a thumb against it and heard a faint ceramic click.

He walked. Stepped. Felt a massive, bulging surge— Stepped—

Love and envy.

Stepped—

A day later: he steps—

—steps

—onto the sheets of folded rock. Stone decks of an earthen ship, adrift in this high desert. A craft of baking rock. The ages have layered and compressed this wrinkled deck; life skitters over it. Chittering. Leaping.

He mounts the flaking rock. A scorpion scuttles aside. Boots bite into crunching gravel.

—plants licking, foamlike, at the coarse crust—

The looming presence

peers out

sucks inunderstands

—and is quiet.

In this brittle Mexican desert he marches on. The air is crystalline; puddles from a recent rain splinter the descending light.

Poppies, mallows, zinnias, cacti, sand mats and yellow splashes of lichen—

—soil awash in life—

—sun spinning over the warped earth—

Nigel smiles. The being rides back, behind the eyes.