2

No further challenge was offered as they made their escape. They climbed the stairs, then crossed the abruptly deserted office. Her very presence threw mounds of paperwork into the air, that spiralled down around her like vast confetti. (I'm married to myself, her mind announced.) Then she was stepping through the doors into the evening beyond, Jerichau a respectful distance behind. There were no thanks forthcoming. He merely said:

‘You can find the carpet.'

‘I don't know how.'

‘Let the menstruum show you.' he told her.

The reply didn't make much sense to her, until he extended his hand, palm up:

‘I never saw the menstruum so strong in anyone,' he said. ‘You can find the Fugue. It and I -'

He didn't need to finish his sentence; she understood. He and the carpet were made of the same stuff; the Weave was the woven, and vice versa. She seized hold of his hand. In the building behind them alarm bells had begun to ring, but she knew they would not come after her: not yet.

Jerichau's face was a knot of anguish. Her touch was not kind to him. But in her head lines of force spiralled and converged. Images appeared: a house, a room. And yes, the carpet, lying in splendour before hungry eyes. The lines twisted; other images fought for her attention. Was that blood spilled so copiously on the floor?; and Cal's heel slipping in it?

She let go of Jerichau's hand. He made a fist of it.

‘Well?' he said.

3

Before she could reply a patrol car squealed into the yard. The driver's partner, alerted by the alarm, was already stepping from the car, demanding that the escapees halt. He began towards them, but the menstruum threw a ghost-wave towards him which caught him up and washed him out into the street. The driver threw himself out of the car and fled towards the safety of brick? and mortar, leaving the vehicle free for the taking.

‘The book,' said Suzanna as she slipped into the driver's seat. ‘Hobart's still got my book.'

‘We've no time to go back,' said Jerichau.

Easily said. It hurt to think of leaving Mimi's gift in the hands of Hobart. But in the time it would take her to find him and claim it back, the carpet might be lost. She had no choice; she'd have to leave it in his possession.

Odd as it seemed, she knew there were few hands in which it was more secure.

4

Hobart retired to the toilet and gave vent to his bladder before he filled his trousers, then went out to face the chaos that had turned his well-ordered headquarters into a battlefield.

The suspects had escaped in a patrol car, he was informed. That was some comfort. The vehicle would be easy to trace. The problem was not finding them again, but subduing them. The woman possessed the skill to induce hallucinations; what other powers might she evidence if cornered? With this and a dozen other questions in his head, he went down in search of Laverick and Boyce.

There were a few men lingering at the cell door, clearly unwilling to step inside. She's slaughtered them, he thought, and could not deny a spasm of satisfaction that the stakes were suddenly so much higher. But it was not blood he smelt as he reached the door, it was excrement.

Laverick and Boyce had stripped off their uniforms, and smeared themselves from head to foot with the product of their own bowels. Now they were crawling around like animals, grinning from ear to ear, apparently well content with themselves.

‘Jesus Christ,' said Hobart.

At the sound of his master's voice, Laverick looked up, and tried to get his tongue around some words of explanation. But his palate wasn't the equal of it. Instead, he crawled into a corner and hid his head.

‘You'd better get them hosed down,' Hobart told one of the officers. ‘We can't have their wives seeing them like that.'

‘What happened, sir?' the man asked.

‘I don't know yet.'

Patterson had appeared from the cell where the woman had been held, tear-stains on his face. He had some words of explanation.

‘She's possessed, sir,' he said. ‘I opened the door and the furniture was half way up the wall.'

‘Keep your hysteria to yourself,' Hobart told him.

‘I swear it, sir,' Patterson protested. ‘I swear it. And there was this light -'

‘No, Patterson! You saw nothing!' Hobart wheeled round on the rest of the spectators. ‘If any of you breathe a word of this, there'll be worse than shit to eat. You understand me?'

There were mute nods from the assembly.

‘What about them?' said one, glancing back into the cell.

‘I told you. Scrub them down and take them home.'

‘But they're like children,' someone said.

‘No children of mine,' Hobart replied, and took himself off upstairs where he could sit and look at the pictures in the book in private.

V

THRESHOLD

1

‘What's the disturbance?' van Niekerk demanded to know.

Shadwell smiled his smile. Though he was irritated by the interruption to the Auction, it had served to lend further heat to the buyers' eagerness.

‘An attempt to steal the carpet -' he said. ‘By whom?' Mrs A. asked. Shadwell pointed to the border of the carpet. There is, you'll observe, a portion of the Weave missing,' he admitted. ‘Small as it is, its knots concealed several inhabitants of the Fugue.' He watched the buyers' faces as he spoke. They were utterly mesmerized by his story, desperate for some confirmation of their dreams. ‘And they came here?' said Norris. ‘They did indeed.'

‘Let's see them,' the Hamburger King demanded, ‘if they're here, let's see them.'

Shadwell paused before replying. ‘Maybe one,' he said. He'd been fully prepared for the request, and had already planned with Immacolata which of the prisoners they'd display. He opened the door, and Nimrod, released from the Hag's embrace, tottered onto the carpet. Whatever the buyers had expected, the sight of this naked child was not it.

‘What is this?' Rahimzadeh snorted. ‘Do you think we're fools?' Nimrod looked up from the Weave underfoot at the puzzled faces that surrounded him. He would have set them right on any number of matters, but that Immacolata had laid her fingers on his tongue, and he couldn't raise a grunt from it.

This is one of the Seerkind.' Shadwell announced.

‘It's just a child,' said Marguerite Pierce, her voice betraying some tenderness. ‘A poor child.'

Nimrod stared at the woman: a fine, big-breasted creature, he thought.

‘He's no child,' said Immacolata. She had slipped into the room unseen; now all eyes turned to her. All except Marguerite's, which still rested on Nimrod. ‘Some of the Seerkind are shape-changers.'

‘This?' said van Niekerk.

‘Certainly.'

‘What crap are you trying to feed us, Shadwell?' Morris said. ‘I'm not taking -'

‘Shut up,' said Shadwell.

Shock closed Norris' mouth; a lot of beef had been minced since he'd last been talked to that way.

‘Immacolata can undo this rapture,' he said, floating the word on the air like a valentine.

Nimrod saw the Incantatrix make a configuration of thumb and third finger, through which, with a sharp intake of breath, she nonchalantly drew the shape-changing rapture. It was not an unwelcome shudder that convulsed him now; he was weary of this hairless skin. He felt his knees begin to tremble, and he fell forward onto the carpet. Around him, he could hear awed whispers, becoming louder with every step of the undeceiving, and more astonished.

Inmacolata was not delicate in her undoing of his anatomy. He winced as his flesh was transformed. There was one delicious moment in this hasty unveiling, when he felt his balls drop once more. Then, his manhood re-established, a second sequence of growth began, his skin tingling as the hair sprouted on his belly and back. Finally his face appeared from the facade of innocence, and he was - balls and all - himself again.