He extended his finger again toward Sister Windchime. «Will you link with me or not? Answer!»

Rivas remembered the glimpse he'd got of the water under the raft, and belatedly he realized what he'd seen down there. At first he'd assumed that it was the drifting corpse of one of the face-divers . . . but it had been moving.

He remembered Sevatividam's unease—outright fear, in fact—when the planet of the floating globes and walruslike creatures had been picked clean; the walrus things were all dead, but there were hungry things swimming among the fallen globes . . . sentient replicas of the original creatures, each one accidentally formed when one of the originals had received Sevatividam's touch while in extreme pain . . . and Sevatividam had feared them, for though attempting to drain him would kill any venturesome replica, totally overload it, the process would harm Sevatividam too . . .

Rivas bit his middle knuckle thoughtfully—and bit a section of skin right off, though he was careful not to wince. Then he lowered his hand into the water below his submerged chair and let the blood leak into the water.

Forgive me, he thought, trying to project the thought, as thoughts had been projected at him when, four days ago, his soul had hung bodiless in the sky over the Regroup Tent. I'm yours, he thought now, come and take me. I'm sorry I hurt you, sorry I fled from you. Come take my blood.

Sevatividam's finger moved closer to Sister Windchime.

«Wait,» Rivas snapped. He'd felt a surge in the water under his hand. «I'll give me to you—the part of me you're interested in, anyway.»

«My dear boy,» said Sevatividam, lowering his hand.

Rivas felt teeth clamp onto his hand. He turned his surprised gasp into a smile—and then, contorting like a man trying very hard to strike a match on the seat of his pants, he yanked the hemogoblin up through the hole.

In the instant of general stunned surprise he flung the squealing thing directly into Sevatividam's face, and as a follow-through to the action he rolled forward out of his submerged seat, somersaulted across the raft—aware of the bang and aspirated thop of bullets being lashed past very close to him—and dove into the water, drawing his knife with his bitten left hand as he sank.

He had no idea what to do now. He had probably got himself and Uri and Sister Windchime killed, but he was certain they'd all been doomed anyway.

Then he was jarred by a solid boom and rattle of bubbles. Something big had impacted very hard with the water. There were further booms as more stuff crashed in, and thinking that whatever was going on might at least be distracting the gunmen, he kicked up to the surface.

It was even noisier out in the air than it had been under water. There were mountainous rendings and crackings from overhead, and the long screams of people falling, and the evidently random pop and ricochet of gunfire, but Rivas's attention was drawn to the raft he'd vacated moments ago– and not just because of the pain-convulsed figure of Sister Sue, who had clearly caught at least one of the bullets meant for Rivas.

A man trying to scream while inflating a balloon would probably have produced sounds like the ones Sevatividam was making now, and as Rivas blinked up at the spectacle he saw Sevatividam's bulk visibly diminishing. The Messiah's narrowing arms were tearing at a luminous membrane that covered his head, and during the couple of seconds it took Rivas to swim to the raft and scramble back aboard, the membrane—which was twitching and pulsing independent of Sevatividam's wrenching at it—doubled the intensity of its glow, then tripled it, and then began actually to flicker with pale flames.

Another thing rushed down through the smoky air and exploded a splash when it hit the water, and Rivas realized that it was masonry, that the whole structure was coming down. Because Sevatividam was losing power?

Sister Windchime had already got up out of her chair, and Rivas shouted at Uri, «Up! Come on! We've got to get out of here!»

Uri sobbed and extended her hands—one of which still clutched the remains of a taco—toward Jaybush. «Lord, save us!» she wailed.

Rivas put down his knife, drew back his left hand and balled it into a fist, and then carefully gave her a solid downward punch next to her chin. Her mouth was knocked open, but clacked shut again when her head hit the table. «Get a boat,» he shouted to Sister Windchime, «and get her and you into it.» He retrieved his knife and turned to Jaybush. A bullet sang past and actually stung the end of his nose, so he crowded closer to the Messiah, almost hugging him.

It hurt to be that close, for the hemogoblin was definitely burning now, but through its dazzlingly vaporizing substance Rivas could see Sevatividam's eyes glaring specifically up at him, full of agony but full of promise too.

Rivas winked at him and drove the knife blade through the clinging hemogoblin into the tanned slab of chest, digging around a bit before finding a gap between the ribs.

A strange thing happened when he drew the blade out; as if he'd reached into a tub of water and stabbed a hole in the bottom, the burning hemogoblin began draining into Sevatividam. Now there was fear in the pouchy eyes, and something like . . . pleading?

Not certain that it was by his own volition, Rivas now swiped the blade across the corded throat, and after the first hard-propelled gout of blood had burst out and rocked him back, and he'd dragged his sleeve across his eyes to be able to see again, he saw an angular object about the size of a thumb joint emerge from the opened throat and hover unsupported in the air in front of his face.

It quivered, and the blood disappeared from it in a fine spray, and he saw that it was a crystal.

Behind him Sister Windchime had found a gondola and wrestled Uri's bulk into it—the gunfire had stopped, but the rain of stone was getting worse, the water was choppy, the air full of splash spray, and the night sky more and more visible beyond the buckling walls and ceiling—but Rivas slowly reached out and took hold of the crystal.

Instantly there was a voice in his head: Swallow me. You win. You're the boss. I'll work for you. Swallow me.

He knew what it would mean—to live forever, always knowing who he was, with a cozy border between what was himself and what wasn't, never to be hurt; in fact, never to be touched.

A week ago he might have been tempted. He pushed the crystal into the tequila bottle and firmly corked it.

He turned around. Sister Windchime was in the gondola with Uri and was clutching the edge of the raft, but not patiently. Rivas tossed the bottle into the little boat and started forward. The light was bad with most of the hanging lamps extinguished, and so though he heard the hollow coughlike sound of another section of roof giving way, and even looked up in useless alarm, he never saw the piece of stone that came tumbling down through the smoke-fouled air and broke his head.