:'We need an answer, Tesla," Haheh said.

'Explain one thing to me," she said. "Why don't you just do this yourselves?" "Because we must not become involved," Rare Utu replied.

"It would dirty us. Taint us."

"Ruin us," said Yie.

"I see."

"Well?" said Haheh. "Do you have an answer?"

Tesia pondered a moment. Then she said, "Yes, I have an answer."

"What?" said Rare Utu.

She thought a moment longer. "Maybe," she replied.

When she got back inside the house she found Seth had taken Amy into the living room, and was sitting on the sofa, gently rocking her.

"Did she eat anything?"

"Yeah," he said quietly. "She's okay." He looked down at Amy fondly.

"Sweet little face," he said. "I heard you talking to them out there. What do they want?"

"My services," Tesla said. "In place of Owen?" Tesia nodded. "He figured that's what they were up to."

"Where is he now?"

"He'd said he'd wait for you at the Nook. It's a little restaurant off Main Street."

"Then I shouldn't keep him waiting any longer," Testa said.

Seth got to his feet very slowly, so as not to disturb Amy. "I'll come with you. I'll watch over the baby while you deal with Owen."

"You should know something about Amy-"

"She's not yours, is she?"

"No. Her mother and the man I thought was her father are dead. And the guy who may be her real father will be coming looking for her."

"Who is he?"

"His name's Tommy-Ray McGuire, but he prefers to be called the Death-Boy." While she was explaining this her eyes went to the cards spread out on the coffee table. "Are these yours?" she asked.

"No, I thought they were yours." She knew at a glance ' what they represented, of course. Lightning, cloud, ape, cell: all stations of Quiddity's cross. "Must be Harry's," she said, and sweeping them into a little pack pocketed them and headed for the door.

Two-thirds of the way down the mountain slope, passing through a patch of trees more thinly spaced than elsewhere, the woman on Harry's back said, "Stop a moment will you?" She surveyed the terrain. "I swear-this is where my daddy was murdered."

"was he lynched too?" Raul replied.

"No," she said. "Shot by a man who thought my daddy was a servant of the Devil."

"Why'd he think that?"

"It's a long story, and a bitter one," the O'Connell woman said. "But I found a way to keep his memory alive."

"How did you do that?" said Harry.

"His name was Harmon," she replied, and as they moved on away from the place she told Harry and Raul the whole bitter story. She told it without melodrama and withOut rancor. It was simply a sorrowful account of her father's last hours, and of how he had passed his vision of Everville to his daughter. "I knew it was my duty to build a city, and call it Everville, but it was hard. Towns don't just spring up because people dream them-well, not in this world, at least. There has to be a reason. A good reason. Maybe there's a place on a river where it's easy to cross. Maybe there's gold in the ground. But my valley just had a piddling little creek, d nobody ever found gold here. So I had to find some other ason for people to come here, and build houses and raise lies. That wasn't easy even at the best of times, and these weren't the best of times. See, the man who killed my daddy became a preacher in Silverton, and he used the pulpit to spread all kinds of rumors about how there was a hole to Hell right here on Hannon's Heights, and devils flew out of it at night.

"So, after a couple of years of being almost alone here, I decided to take myself off to Salem, where maybe I'd find some people who hadn't heard what the preacher Whitney was saying. And one day, I'm talking to this man in a feed store, and I'm telling him about my valley, my sweet valley, and how he should come look at it for himself, and suddenly he digs out a silver dollar and slaps it on the counter and says to me: Show me. And I say to him: It's quite a ways from here. And he puts his hand on my leg, and starts to pull up my skirt and he says: No, it's real near.

"Then I realized what he was talking about, and I called him every kind of name under the sun and I took myself off in a high old fury. But as I was walking home, I got to thinking about what he'd said, and I thought maybe the best way to bring men to my valley was first to bring women-"

"Clever," said Raul.

"Men don't always follow religion. they don't always follow common sense. But women, they follow. Women they'll suffer every kind of privation for. This has been proved, over and over." She tapped Harry on the shoulder. "You've been stupid for women, have you not?"

"It's been known," said Harry. "So, you see, I had my method. I knew how I would bring men to fill up my valley. And once they were there, they'd start to build my daddy's dream city for me."

"I get the theory of it," Raul said. "But how did it work?"

"Well, my father had been given a cross, by a man called Buddenbaum-"

"Buddenbaum?" Harry said. "It can't be the same man-"

"You've heard of him?" "Heard of him? I shot him this afternoon."

"Dead?"

"No. He was very much alive when I saw him last. But like I said, it can't be the same Buddenbaum."

"Oh I think it could," Maeve said. "And if it is@h, if it is-I have some questions I want that bastard to answer."

Larry Glodoski and his soldiers had staggered out of Hamrick's Bar feeling ready to take on anything that crossed their path. they had guns, they had God, and they could all whistle Sousa: What more did an army need?

The civilian population was not so sanguine, however. A lot of people-particularly the tourists@ad decided that whatever was happening on the mountain, they'd prefer to see it on tomorrow's news than experience it in the flesh, and they were beating a hasty and disorderly retreat. More than once, as the men made their way down Main Street, they had to step aside to let a carload of vacationers careen by.

"Cowards!" Waits yelled after one such vehicle had almost mounted the sidewalk to avoid them.

"Let them go," Glodosid slurred. "We don't need bystanders. They'll only get in the way."

"You know what?" Reidlinger said, seeing a sobbing woman bundling her kids into a RV, "I'm going to have to leave you guys to it. I'm sorry Larry, but I got kids at home, and if anything happened to them-2'

Giodoski gave him the fish-eye. "Okay," he said. "So what are you waiting for?" Reidlinger started to apologize again, but Glodoski cut him short. "Just go," he said. "We don't need you." Reidlinger made a shamefaced departure. "Anybody else want to go, while the going's goodt' Larry asked.

Alstead cleared his throat, and said, "You know, Larry, we've all of us got responsibilities. I mean, maybe we're better leaving this to the authorities."

"Are you deserting too?" Giodoski wanted to know.

"No, Larry, I'm just saying@'

Bosley interrupted him. "Well now he said, and inted down the block at the two people coming in their direction. He knew and despised them both. The woman for r foul mouth, the youth at her side for his sodomitic ways.

"These two are dangerous," he said. "They're accomplices of Buddenbaum's."

"There's not two of them," Bill Waits observed, "there's three. Lundy's carrying a baby." "Stealing children now," said Bosley. "How low will they stoop?"

"Wasn't she the one at the crossroads?" Larry said.

"She was."

"Gentleman, we've got work to do," Larry declared, stepping past Bosley.

"I'll front this. You just keep your eyes open."

Tesia and Seth had seen the quartet by now, and were crossing the street to avoid them. Giodoski stepped off the sidewalk to intercept them, demanding as he approached, "Whose kid is that?" His inquiry was ignored. "I'm not going to ask again," he said. "Whose baby have you got there?"