Puppetman had made certain of it. She looked at Gregg and tears brimmed again. He hugged her silently as Puppetman lapped at the sorrow.

It was easy. It was all so easy with Puppetman.

Amy held the curtains open for him and he walked out into the familiar glare of lights. The floor was a solid mass of people: reporters in front; behind them, Hartmann supporters from the convention intermingled with jokers and hospital staff. Amy and John had argued for restricting admission strictly to the press, but Gregg had overruled them. A large contingent of jokers had besieged the hospital, and Gregg insisted that they be allowed to attend as well. Security blocked the doors after capacity was reached; behind the windows, Gregg could see that the corridors were also wallto-wall.

Let them in, Gregg had told Ray. The jokers are our people. We all know why they're concerned. If they're clean, give 'em passes until were out of room. I trust you, Billy. I know nothing will happen.

Ray had been almost pitifully grateful at that. That had tasted good, too.

Gregg walked slowly to the podium and bowed his head, gripping either side of the lectern. He took a deep breath and heard it echo against the hard tile walls. Puppetman could feel the sympathy beating against him. He reveled in it. Gregg could see the puppets interspersed with them: Peanut, File, Mothmouth, Glowbug, a dozen others just in the first few ranks. Gregg knew from long experience that a crowd was an easily swayed beast. Control enough of them and the rest would follow along.

This would be easy. This would be cake. He hated it.

Gregg raised his head, solemn. "I… I really don't know what-" He stopped deliberately and closed his eyes. Hartmann Composing Himself. Out in the audience, he heard a subdued sob. He tugged gently at the dozens of mental strings and felt the puppets move. He let his voice tremble just slightly when he resumed.

"… don't know what to say to you all. The doctors have given you their report. Umm, I'd like to say Ellen is doing fine, but that's not really the truth. Let's just say that she is doing as well as can be expected at the moment. Her physical injuries will heal; the rest, well-" Again a pause; he ducked his head for a moment. "The rest is going to take a lot of time. I've heard that there's already a roomful of flowers and cards that some of you have sent, and she asked me to thank you. She'll need all the support and prayers and love you can give her."

He gestured at Amy. "I was going to let Ms.: Sorensonmy aide-read you my statement. I'd already drafted it, telling all of you that I was withdrawing my name from nomination due to… to the unfortunate accident today. I even read it to Ellen. Afterward, she asked me to give the paper to her, and I did. This is what she gave me back."

They waited, obedient. Puppetman tightened his fingers around the strings.

Gregg reached into his pocket. His hand came out fisted; he turned his hand over and opened his fingers. Scraps of paper fluttered to the wooden floor.

"She told me that she'd already lost a son," he said quietly. "She said she wasn't about to lose the rest."

Puppetman pulled the strings tight, opening the minds of the puppets among them. The murmurs of the audience rose, peaked, broke. From the back of the gymnasium where the jokers watched, the applause began, swelling and moving through the audience until most of them were on their feet, clapping hands together, laughing and crying at the same time. The room was suddenly noisy and wild like a camp revival meeting, everyone swaying and shouting and weeping, grieving and celebrating at once. He could see Peanut, his lone arm waving back and forth, his mouth a black wound in the scaly, hard face as he jumped up and down. The excitement triggered Glowbug's joker: his pulsing radiance rivaled the electronic flashes.

The cameras swiveled about, panning the odd celebration. Reporters whispered urgently into microphones. Gregg stood there, posed, his empty hand out over the torn-up paper. He let his hand drop to his side and lifted his head as if hearing the acclimation for the first time. He shook his head in feigned bemusement.

Puppetman exulted. Gregg channeled a portion of the stolen response into himself. He gasped at the pure, undiluted strength of it. He raised his hands for quiet as Puppetman loosened the strings slightly-it took long seconds before he could be heard at all over them.

His voice was choked. "Thank you. Thank you all. I think mavbe Ellen deserves to be your nominee; she's worked as hard or harder at this, even when she was tired from the pregnancy or a little sick in the mornings. If the convention doesn't want me, maybe we'll place her name in nomination instead."

That brought more applause and outright cheering, sprinkled with sobbing laughter. All the while, Gregg gave them a wan, strained smile that had nothing of Puppetman in it. Part of him seemed to be simply, scornfully, observing.

"I just wanted all of you to know that we're still in this fight despite everything. I know Ellen is watching this from her room and she wants me to thank you for your sympathy and your continued support. Now, I'd like to get back to her myself. Ms. Sorenson will answer any other questions you might have. Once again, thank you all. Amy-"

Gregg raised his hands in salute; Puppetman yanked hard. They cheered him, tears streaming down their faces. He had it all back.

It was his, now. He knew it. Most of him rejoiced.

2:00 P.M.

The sound of a soap filtered through the cardboard and cottage-cheese stucco walls of the cheap motel room. On the screen of the room television a pretty young joker woman with bright-blue skin was trying to guess the password from Henry Winkler's clues. Wrapped in a cheap, stiff housecoat her mysterious benefactor had bought on sale at Kmart, Sara sat on the end of the bed and stared at the screen as if the images on it mattered.

She was still trying to pull together the broken glass pieces the news flash had left in her belly. The wife of Senator Gregg Hartmann has miscarried in the wake of her tragic fall… The senator was bravely containing his grief as he fought for political survival on the convention floor. Just the sort of persevering spirit America needed to carry her into the nineties, or so the commentator's tone seemed to say. Or had that just been the blood in Sara's ears.

Bastard. Monster. He sacrificed his wife, his unborn child, to save his political hide.

An image of Ellen Hartmann's face surfaced through the shrouds she laid over her memories of the W.H.O. tour. A wan, brave smile, knowing, forbearing… infinitely tragic.

Now she lay broken and near death, the child she had so desired lost.

Sara was never the strident kind of feminist who saw every human interaction in terms of grand collectives, political synecdoche wherein a man was Men and a woman, Women.

Yet this struck her deeply, offended her on some primal level. Angered her: for herself, for Ellen, for all of Hartmann's victims, yes, but especially the women.

For Andrea.

There was a thing the man who had hurried her from the hotel last night as the police cars wailed their red-and-blue way to the latest battle scene, had suggested when they talked in the early hours of this morning. She had promised to consider it before he left about whatever errands he had to tend to-not even reporter's curiosity made her really want to know. Because his suggestion was natural enough, she supposed, for a self-confessed Soviet spymaster. But it shocked a Midwestern girl, transplanted into the neurasthenic garden of the New York intellectual set, even one who prided herself on her case-hardening in the streets and back rooms of Jokertown.