Once that was done, Underhill nodded pleasantly, as if they were at a cocktail party instead of out here in a shrieking storm, illuminated by the newly installed security lights.

“You knew my name because the alien presence in Jefferson Tract has caused a low-level telepathic effect.” Underhill smiled. “Sounds silly when you say it right out, doesn’t it? But it’s true. The effect is transient, harmless, and too shallow to be good for much except party games, and we’re a little too busy tonight for those.”

Henry’s tongue came finally, blessedly, unstuck. “You didn’t come over here in a snowstorm because I knew your name,” Henry said. “You came over because I knew your wife’s name. And your daughter’s.”

Underhill’s smile didn’t falter. “Maybe I did,” he said. “In any case, I think it’s time we both got under cover and got some rest-it’s been a long day.”

Underhill began walking, but his way took him alongside the fence, toward the other parked trailers and campers. Henry kept pace, although he had to work in order to do it; there was nearly a foot of snow on the ground now, it was drifting, and no one had tramped it down over here on the dead man’s side.

“Mr Underhill. Owen. Stop a minute and listen to me. I’ve got something important to tell you.”

Underhill kept walking along the path on his side of the fence (which was also the dead man’s side; did Underhill not know that?), head down against the wind, still wearing that faintly pleasant smile. And the awful thing, Henry knew, was that Underhill wanted to stop. It was just that Henry had not, so far, given him a reason to do so.

“Kurtz is crazy,” Henry said. He was still keeping pace but he was panting audibly now, his exhausted legs screaming. “But he’s crazy like a fox.”

Underhill kept walking, head down and little smile in place under the idiotic mask. If anything, he walked faster. Soon Henry would have to run in order to keep up on his side of the fence. If running was still possible for him.

“You’ll turn the machine-guns on us,” Henry panted. “Bodies go in the barn… barn gets doused with gasoline… probably from Old Man Gosselin’s own pump, why waste government issue… and then ploof, up in smoke… two hundred… four hundred… it’ll smell like a VFW pig-roast in hell…”

Underhill’s smile was gone and he walked faster still. Henry somehow found the strength to trot, gasping for air and fighting his way through knee-high snowdunes. The wind was keen against his throbbing face. Like a blade.

“But Owen… that’s you, right?… Owen?… you remember that old rhyme… the one that goes “Big fleas… got little fleas… to bite em… and so on and so on… and so on ad infinitum?" that’s here and that’s you… because Kurtz has got his own cadre the man under him, I think his name is Johnson…”

Underhill gave him a single sharp look, then walked faster than ever. Henry somehow managed to keep up, but he didn’t think he would be able to much longer. He had a stitch in his side. It was hot and getting hotter. “That was supposed… to be your job the second part of the clean-up… Imperial Valley, that’s the code name… mean anything to you?”

Henry saw it didn’t. Kurtz must never have told Underhill about the operation that would wipe out most of Blue Group. Imperial Valley meant exactly squat to Owen Underhill, and now, in addition to the stitch, Henry had what felt like an iron band around his chest, squeezing and squeezing.

“Stop… Jesus, Underhill… can’t you…?”

Underhill just kept striding along. Underhill wanted to keep his last few illusions. Who could blame him?

Johnson… a few others… at least one’s a woman… could have been you too if you hadn’t tucked up… you crossed the line, that’s what he thinks… not the first time, either… you did it before, at some place like Bossa Nova…”

That earned Henry a sudden sharp look. Progress? Maybe.

“In the end I think even Johnson goes… only Kurtz leaves here alive… the rest nothing but a pile of ashes and bones… your fucking telepathy doesn’t… tell you that, does it… your little parlor-trick mind-reading… won’t even… fucking touch… that…”

The stitch in his side deepened and sank into his right armpit like a claw. At the same time his feet slipped and he went flailing headfirst into a snowdrift. His lungs tore furiously for air and instead got a great gasp of powdery snow.

Henry flailed to his knees, coughing and choking, and saw Underhill’s back just disappearing into the wall of blowing snow. Not knowing what he was going to say, knowing only that it was his last chance, he screamed: “You tried to piss on Mr Rapeloew’s toothbrush and when you couldn’t do that you broke their plate! Broke their plate and ran away! Just like you’re running away now, you fucking coward!”

Ahead of him, barely visible in the snow, Owen Underhill stopped.

For a moment he only stood there, his back to Henry, who knelt panting like a dog in the snow with melting, icy water running down his burning face. Henry was aware in a way that was both distant and immediate that the scratch on his leg where the byrus was growing had begun to itch.

At last Underhill turned around and came back. “How do you know about the Rapeloews? The telepathy is fading. You shouldn’t be able to get that deep.”

“I know a lot,” Henry said. He got to his feet and then stood there, gasping and coughing. “Because it runs deep in me. I’m different. My friends and I, we were all different. There were four of us. Two are dead. I’m in here. The fourth one… Mr Underhill, the fourth one is your problem. Not me, not the people you’ve got in the barn or the ones you’re still bringing in, not your Blue Group or Kurtz’s Imperial Valley cadre. Only him.” He struggled, not wanting to say the name-Jonesy was the one to whom he had been the closest, Beaver and Pete were great, but only Jonesy could run with him mind for mind, book for book, idea for idea; only Jonesy also had the knack of dreaming outside the lines as well as seeing the line. But Jonesy was gone, wasn’t he? Henry was quite sure of that. He had been there, a tiny bit of him had been there when the redblack cloud passed Henry, but by now his old friend would have been eaten alive. His heart might still beat and his eyes might still see, but the essential Jonesy was as dead as Pete and the Beav.

“Jonesy’s your problem, Mr Underhill. Gary Jones, of Brookline, Massachusetts. “'Kurtz is a problem, too.” Underhill spoke too softly to be heard over the howling wind, but Henry heard him, anyway-heard him in his mind.

Underhill looked around. Henry followed the shift of his head and saw a few men running down the makeshift avenue between the campers and trailer boxes-no one close. Yet the entire area around the store and the barn was mercilessly bright, and even with the wind he could hear revving engines, the stuttery roar of generators, and men yelling. Someone was giving orders through a bullhorn. The overall effect was eerie, as if the two of them had been trapped by the storm in a place filled with ghosts. The running men even looked like ghosts as they faded into the dancing sheets of snow.

“We can’t talk here,” Underhill said. “Listen to me, and don’t make me repeat a single word, buck.”

And in Henry’s head, where there was now so much input that most of it was tangled into an incomprehensible stew, a thought from Owen Underhill’s mind suddenly rose clear and plain: Buck. His word. I can’t believe I used his word.

“I’m listening,” Henry said.

The shed was on the far side of the compound, as far from the barn as it was possible to get, and although the outside was as brilliantly lit as the rest of this hellish concentration camp, the inside was dark and smelled sweetly of old hay. And something else, something a little more acrid.