"Do you see?" Jaffe said.

"Oh yes," she said.

He asked the question again, his voice lighter than she'd ever heard it.

"Do you see, Poppa?"

"Poppa?" she said.

"I'm not afraid, Poppa," the voice out of the Jaff went on. "They won't hurt me. I'm the Death-Boy."

Now she understood. Jaffe wasn't simply seeing with Tommy-Ray's eyes, he was speaking with the boy's voice. She'd lost the father to the son.

"Jaffe!" she said. "Listen to me. I need your help! Jaffe?" He made no reply. Avoiding sight of the schism as best she could she went to him and took hold of his tattered shirt, hauling him towards the front door. "Randolph!" she said. "You've got to speak to me."

The man grinned. It wasn't an expression that had ever belonged on that face. It was the grin of a Californian prince, wide and toothy. She let him go.

"A lot of good you'll do me," she said.

She couldn't afford the time to try to coax him back from the adventure he was sharing with Tommy-Ray. She'd have to do what she was planning alone. It was a notion simple in the conceiving and, she guessed, damn difficult—if not impossible—in the execution. But she had no alternative. She was not a great shaman. She couldn't seal the schism. But she might move it. She'd proved twice before that she had the power to pass in and out of the Loop. To dissolve herself—and others—in thought, and remove them to Trinity. Could she also jump dead matter? Wood, and plaster? A piece of a house, for instance? This part of this house, for instance? Could she dissolve the slice of the Cosm she and the schism occupied, and remove it to Point Zero, where a force was ticking that might fell the giants before they spread their madness?

There was no answer to the questions this side of attempting the suit. If she failed, the answer was no. Simple as that. She'd have a few moments the wiser for her failure before wisdom, failure and her aspirations to shamanhood became academic.

Tommy-Ray had started to speak again, his monologue now deteriorated to a ragged babble.

"...up like Andy..." he was saying, "...only higher...see me, Poppa?...up like Andy...I can see the shore! I can see the shore!"

That at least did make sense. He was within sighting distance of the Cosm, which meant the Iad were almost as close.

"...Death-Boy..." he started to say again, "...I'm the Death-Boy..."

"Can't you tune him out?" she said to Jaffe, knowing her words were falling on deaf ears.

"Whoo-ee!" the kid was shouting. "Here we come! Here—we—come!"

She didn't look back towards the schism to see if the giants were visible, though she was sorely tempted. The moment would come when she'd have to look it in the eye but she wasn't yet ready; wasn't calm, wasn't girded. She took another step back to the front door, and seized firm hold of the door jamb. It felt so damn solid. Her common sense protested at the idea of being able to think such solidity into another place and time. She told her common sense to go get fucked. It and the madness that was spewing from the schism were not opposites. Reason could be cruel; logic could be lunacy. There was another state of mind that put aside such naive dichotomies; that made power from being in between conditions.

All things to all men.

She remembered suddenly what D'Amour had said, about there being a savior rumored. She'd thought he'd meant Jaffe, but she'd been looking too far afield. She was that savior. Tesla Bombeck, the wild woman of West Hollywood, reversed and resurrected.

The realization gave her new faith; and with the faith, a simple grasp of how she might make the suit work. She didn't try to block out Tommy-Ray's idiot whoops, or the sight of Jaffe limp and defeated, or the whole nonsense of the solid becoming thought and thought moving the solid. It was all a part of her, even the doubt. Perhaps especially that. She didn't need to deny the confusions and contradictions to be powerful; she needed to embrace them. Devour them with the mouth of her mind, chew them up, swallow them. They were all devourable. The solid and insolid, this world and that, all edible and moveable feasts. Now she knew that, nothing could keep her from the table.

She looked at the schism, dead on.

"Not even you," she said, and began to eat.

As Grillo had got within two steps of the front door the innocents had come back to claim him, their assault more pitiless than ever, this close to the schism. He lost the power to move forward or back, as brutalities rose around him. He seemed to be treading on small, bloody bodies. They turned their sobbing faces up to him, but he knew there was no help for them. Not now. The shadow that was moving across Quiddity brought with it an end to mercy. Nor would its reign ever end. It would never be judged; never be brought to account. Somebody moved past him towards the door, a form barely visible in an air thick with suffering. Grillo tried hard to grasp a solid sight of the man, but garnered only the briefest glimpse of a thuggish face, heavy-boned and lantern-jawed. Then the stranger went into the house. A movement on the ground around his feet took his glance from door to floor. The children's faces were still visible, but now the horror had a new twist. Black snakes, as thick as his arm, were crawling over the children as they followed the man inside. Appalled, he took a step forward in the vain hope of stamping one or all of them out. The step took him closer to the edge of insanity, which paradoxically lent force to his crusade. He took a second step, and a third, trying to put his heel on the heads of these black beasts. The fourth step took him over the threshold of the house, and into another madness entirely.

"Raul?"

Of all people, Raul.

Just as she'd got a grip on the task before her he stepped through the door, his appearance here so shocking she might have put it down to some mental aberrance, had she not been certain of her mind's workings now as she'd never been certain in her life before. This was no hallucination. He was here in the flesh, her name on his lips and a look of welcome on his face.

"What are you doing here?" she said, feeling her grasp of the suit slipping from her.

"I came for you," was his reply. On its heels, and on his, came grim comprehension of what he meant by that. There were Lix slithering over the doorstep into the house.

"What have you done?" she said.

"I told you," he replied. "I came for you. We all did."

She took a step away from him, but with the schism occupying half the house and the Lix guarding the door, the only route of escape available to her was up the stairs. At best that promised a temporary reprieve. She'd be trapped up there, waiting for them to find her in their own good time, except that they wouldn't need to bother. In minutes, the Iad would be in the Cosm. After which, death might very well be desirable. She had to stay put, Lix or no Lix. Her business was here, and it had to be done quickly.

"Keep away from me," she said to Raul. "I don't know why you're here, but just keep your distance!"

"I came to see the arrival," Raul replied. "We can wait here together if you like."

Raul's shirt was unbuttoned, and around his neck she caught sight of a familiar object: the Shoal medallion. With the sight came a suspicion: that this wasn't Raul at all. His manner wasn't that of the frightened Nunciate she'd met at the Mision de Santa Catrina. There was somebody else behind his semi-simian face: the man who'd first shown her the Shoal's enigmatic sigil.

"Kissoon," she said.

"Now you've spoiled my surprise," he replied.

"What have you done to Raul?"

"Unhoused him. Occupied the body. It wasn't difficult. He'd got a lot of Nuncio in him. That made him available. I pulled him into the Loop, the same way I did with you. Only he didn't have the wits to resist me the way you or Randolph resisted. He gave in quickly enough."