“I know,” said Kim. “Tell me about the villa.”

Gould recalled that the living room had been coldly formal; that Kane had lived in his den, had entertained his friends there. “Sometimes,” Gould said, “people he’d served with, in the fleet, came to town.” He shook his head. “Kane and his friends knew how to party.”

“It’s beautiful country,” said Kim. “He must have had a lovely view.”

“He had a deck on the side of the house where you could sit in the evenings and watch the sun go down behind the mountains—”

They continued in that manner for several minutes until Kim felt ready to ask the one serious question she’d brought with her. “Did I hear you say there was a secret room?”

“Secret room?”

“Yes. When I was here before, you told me that during his last couple of years there, he sealed off part of the house. Wouldn’t let anybody see it.”

“Oh yes. I’d forgot. That was the den. After the Mount Hope business, he stopped using it for guests and switched to the living room.”

“Why do you think he did that? Was he restoring it, maybe?”

“No, I don’t think so.” He made a face, signifying he was thinking hard. “You could see Mount Hope from the den. Maybe he didn’t want to look at it anymore. Or maybe he’d just developed an eccentricity. Artists are like that.”

“I suppose,” she said. “He wouldn’t let anybody in there?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“I wonder if it might have been that he’d begun to work there? To paint?” Or whether he’d hidden something he didn’t want anyone to get near. Like the Hunter logs?

“I doubt it. He had a workroom toward the front of the house.”

“Where was the den?”

“At the rear.”

“You never saw it again after he sealed it off?”

“No. Never did.” He looked at her and at the two Kane’s. “Now, why don’t we arrange for you to take one of these little beauties home?”

Kim had to pay the Rent-All Emporium for both the wet suit, which had been torn, and for the mask and converter, which were still in the river. They asked no questions, but snickered at her when she told them she wanted to rent a rubber boat and another wetsuit. It would require, they explained, a substantially heavier deposit.

An hour later, in her rented flyer, she lifted off the Gateway pad into a cold gray afternoon and once more turned south. For a few minutes she ran above a train, but it quickly distanced her and lost itself in the craggy countryside.

She had not told Solly what she intended to do because he would have insisted on coming. That would have been comforting, but she was anxious to have the results on the Hunter logs. And she felt a compunction to confront her fears about the local demon. After her experience in the river, she told herself, she feared nothing that walked.

She looked up the train on the schedule. The Overland. Hauling dry goods, electronics, lumber, and machinery from Sorrentino to the coast. She liked trains. Always had. She’d have preferred at the moment to be aboard one.

She’d circled the location of Kane’s villa on her map of the village. It had been on the north side, in an area now in deep water.

She traced bearings from the Kane home to the dam, to the city hall (which was in fifteen meters of water, but whose tower still rose proudly out of the lake), and to a onetime flyer maintenance facility atop a low hill that had become an island when the dam came down.

The river looked cold in the somber light. She glided out over the lake and, minutes later, descended on Cabry’s Beach.

The flyer came to rest with one of its treads in the water. She watched the edge of the forest while changing into her wet suit. The tree branches swayed gently in the wind coming off the water. No blue jay fluttered through that sky; no deer came down to the shoreline to drink.

She opened the hatch and eased down onto the sand. It crackled underfoot. The wind was cold. She turned up the heat in her suit and tugged a woolen hat down over her ears. The sky was heavy and overcast.

She pulled the boat out of the back seat, hit the inflater, mounted the motor, and dragged it into the water. It had a transparent bottom. She tossed in a paddle, her flippers, and the converter. And her packet of pictures of Severin Village circa 573. She added forty meters of line, marked at two-meter intervals, and used a rock to make an anchor.

She strapped a lamp and an imager to her wrist, and looped a belt around her waist. She attached a utility pouch to it, and put in a compass and a laser cutter. Satisfied that she had everything, she launched the boat and started its waterjet engine.

The surface was choppy. Although she had a remote, she sat in the rear, steering by hand, headed out into the lake.

She moved onto the bearing with the dam and followed it until the city hall and the flyer repair facility lined up. Then she killed the engine and looked down through the bottom of the boat. The water was clear and she could see a bench. Nearby lay an abandoned flyer. Beyond the flyer she could make out a group of poles. A children’s swing set. The swings swayed gently as she passed overhead.

The boat rose and fell.

She saw a house, but it was not Kane’s, not the right shape. Her pictures indicated it was probably his neighbor on the south, a physician who’d performed well during the disaster.

She continued straight on until she saw what she was looking for: an arched pavilion, a stone wall, a Thunderbird house.

That was it. It had angled wings and courtyards and a long central spine. The roof, with its crests and ridgelines, was unmistakable.

Kim dropped her makeshift anchor over the side and watched the line play out to fourteen meters. Deep. She secured it to the gunwale, pulled on her gear, and slipped into the water. She immediately felt safer, as though she were no longer exposed.

She turned toward the bottom and rode down on her jets.

Gray light filtered through the surface. The water grew cool and then warm again as she passed through alternating currents. An eel glided past. She switched on her lamp and a few fish quickly retreated. The boat was a dark shape above.

She leveled off in front of the second floor, eye-to-eye with an oculus window. The interior was thick with silt. But she could see a bed, a dresser, a couple of chairs. A fish glided out of a venting pipe, turned toward the lamp, and then disappeared out of the room.

She descended to the front door. It had no power, no knob, no easy way to open it. She passed by, moved along the front of the building, found a gaping window, and swam in.

Her lamp picked out a couch, a fireplace, and a flatscreen in the down position on one wall. This, she thought, had been the formal living room Gould had described.

Amazing. Kane had apparently not bothered to move his furniture when he left, had simply given in to the rising water.

She passed into the central hallway. A staircase rose on one side, assorted chairs and tables were tumbled about, and a couple of beams lay in the debris.

Kim pushed across to the opposite wing. She had to struggle to get the door open. Inside, she looked into what seemed to be Kane’s work area. A wooden table was turned over, its legs sticking up like those of a dead animal. Several rolls of what might once have been canvasses were scattered in the silt. Artists’ brushes lay everywhere, and pieces of an easel.

She could make out sketches, or parts of sketches, on the walls. Women’s faces, mostly. Framed by trees, lanterns, a vestibule. But always the woman was prominent.

They were incomplete, as though he were trying out ideas. The expressions were inevitably wistful, melancholy, mournful. No life of the party here. The hairstyles were different, the hair itself sometimes cut short, sometimes shoulder length, inevitably in the fashions of the 570s. But it struck her, as she passed along the wall, examining the figures in the glow of the lamp, that each was an aspect of Emily.