"So early on, in order to help him develop, they began experiments in which they brought him into contact with other children, normal children. One of the people inside the system now, a woman named Martine Desroubins, was one of those children. She knew your son only as a voice—but she knew him."

Olga had stopped crying now. She sat against the pod staring at her hands. "I don't understand any of this. Where is he now? What have they done to him?"

"They have used him, Olga. For thirty years, they have used him. I am sorry to tell you this—I beg you to believe that—but they have not used him kindly. He has been raised in the dark, figuratively and literally. He does not even know what he is—he acts almost without thinking, half-awake, dreaming, confused. He has the powers of a god but the understanding of an autistic child."

"I want to go to him! I don't care what he is!"

"I know. And I know that when you speak to him you will be kind. You will try to understand."

"Understand what?" She was breathing hard now, squeezing her fingers into fists. A fire ax, she thought. There must be a fire ax somewhere. I will take it and I will smash this man Jongleur's black coffin to bits, drag him out into the light like a worm from its hole. . . .

"You son is not . . . a normal human. How could he be? He speaks almost entirely through others. Somehow, he has connected to the Tandagore coma children. I do not understand that part yet, but. . . ."

"Speaks through . . . others. . . ?"

"Children . . . the children in your dreams. I think they are his voice, trying to talk to you."

Olga felt her heart skip. "He . . . he knows me?"

"Not truly. but I think he sensed something about you. Didn't you say that what first made you suspicious was that none of the affected children were viewers of your program? Your son escaped the bounds of the Grail network some time ago—he has explored much, and I suspect that he was drawn particularly to the children watching your show, as he has been drawn to other children elsewhere. What it was he sensed in you, I don't know, but he may have felt some deep affinity, some . . . similarity to himself. Wordless, uncomprehending, he immediately lost any other interest in your child viewers. Instead, he tried in his half-conscious way to . . . make contact. With you."

She was sobbing convulsively but her eyes were dryly painful, as though she had cried so much she could never shed tears again. Those terrible headaches, the confusing voices, they hadn't been a curse at all, but. . . ." My ch–child! My baby! Trying to f–f–find me!"

"Time is very short, Olga. We have only minutes, then things will have gone too far. I will try to bring him to you—let you speak to him yourself. Do not be too frightened."

"I would never be frightened. . . !"

"Wait. Wait until you have spoken to him. He was born different, but even his raw humanity has been shaped by cold, self-serving men. And now another man, even crueler, has hurt him and abused him until he has nearly given up. It may be too late. But if you can speak to him, calm him, many lives can be saved."

"I still don't understand. Where is he?" She looked around wildly, imagining some strange, Frankensteinian form might suddenly appear from the shadows that cloaked the huge room. "I want to go to him. I don't care what he is, what he looks like. Let me go to him!"

"You must listen carefully, Olga." Sellars sounded even more strained, as though he were clinging to a high place by his fingernails. "Time is short. There is still a lot I haven't told you, crucial things. . . ."

"Then tell me now!"

And as she sat in the big, dark room, the only moving thing in the circle of light, he told her as kindly as possible where her son was and what he was doing. Then he left her alone so he could see to the rest of his own desperate agenda.

Olga had thought she had no more tears left to cry. She had been wrong.

The intruder was still talking to someone—someone Jongleur couldn't see. Immersed in protective fluids, he writhed in impotent fury. He tried to bring up the room audio but again he discovered himself blocked, the commands disabled. He knew it must be his ex-employee who had done all this, but why should that street animal go to such ridiculous lengths just to confuse him?

Jongleur stared at the screen with the intensity of a mad thing, an old falcon who lived only to strike at anything that moved. The woman's lips were moving—what was she saying? Damn her, is she talking to Dread?

He watched the woman begin to cry again, shuddering, pulling at her face with her hands, and his distant heart was again chilled. She knew. Somehow, she had found out. Which meant that his enemies knew as well, for who else would tell her?

Why bring this woman into it? What does he think she can possibly accomplish?

She was standing over his pod now—his pod, only a few short meters from the rags and tatters of his living body. He switched cameras so he could see her face, which was grotesque with rage and misery. She made a fist and struck the pod—a tiny, meaningless blow on the hardened plasteel, but Felix Jongleur suddenly felt himself suffocating, his fear twisting ever tighter. There were strangers in his home—he was violated. Pursued. Caught.

No! I won't let it happen. A dozen possible reprisals flashed through his mind, all thwarted by the evacuations and the meddling in his system. Even his last-ditch defenses had been rendered inoperative. He could not flood the room with immobilizing gas or crippling sonics.

I won't let it happen!

It came to him suddenly, but he could not at first decide if it was genius or complete madness. Months—they had been immobilized for almost twenty-four months. Would it work? It would—it had to. He triggered a massive dose of adrenaline to be administered to both of them. It would work. He knew it would. He was excited now, his pulse suddenly racing with feverish glee instead of terror. What was the release sequence? If that much adrenaline hit them and they couldn't get out, they would thrash themselves to death—damage the breathing masks and drown in the suspension fluid.

There. He selected the commands. In the window in his mind, the system brought up the life signs, the graphs already spiking as they rose toward something like normal function, then moved on beyond, fueled by the adrenal surge. He brought up the view of the room again, the heedless woman sitting obliviously on the floor of his sanctum sanctorum between his own helpless body and the last remnants of Ushabti, the terrible mistake that had destroyed his beautiful Avialle.

Violated. She has. . . .

"There is an intruder just steps away from you," he told his servants, making the words thunder in their ears so they would retain them even in the confusion of waking to their real bodies for the first time in two years. "Take her and hurt her and find out what she knows. Do this and afterward you may remain free."

The indicator lights blinked, then blinked again as the lids of the two black pods slowly began to rise.