Buddenbaum leaned forward. "Are you going to share that?" he said. She passed the joint over the fire. It had induced some subtle visual hallucinations. The flames had slowed their licking, and the beads of sweat on Buddenbaum had become crystalline. He drew on the joint, and spoke as he held his breath. "What's real to us isn't what's real to the rest of the world. You know that." He turned his gaze towards the dark street. A family of five was hurrying along the sidewalk, the children sobbing. "Whatever they're suffering," he said, exhaling now,

"and I don't mean to diminish them in saying this-it's an animal response. that's not real in any absolute sense. It will pass. All things pass, sooner or later." She remembered Kissoon, in Toothaker's house. This had been his wisdom too.

"The life of the flesh, the animal life, is transient. It melts, it fades away. But what's hidden in the flesh-the enduring spirit-that has permanence, or at least the hope of permanence. It's up to us to make that hope a reality."

"Is that why you want the Art?"

Buddenbaum drew on the joint again, passed it back to Tesia, and leaned back in his chair. "Ah... the Art," he said.

"I was there when the Jaff got it. You know that?"

"Of course."

"He didn't exactly flourish."

"I know that too," Buddenbaum said. "But then he was weak. And crazy. I'm neither. I've lived two and a half lifetimes, preparing for what's about to happen here. I'm ready to handle power."

"So why do you need me?"

Buddenbaum rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "This ganga's good," he said. "The truth is, it's not you I need, Tesia."

"It's the Jai-Wai."

"I'm afraid so."

"Do you want to tell me why?"

Buddenbaum considered this for a moment.

"If you want my help," Tesla said, "you're going to have to trust me."

"That's difficult," Buddenbaum said. "I've had so many solitary years, keeping my secrets."

"I'l I make it easy for you," Tesla said. "I'll tell you what I know. Or what I've guessed." She picked up the cards, and shuffled them in the firelight, her eyes on Buddenbaum as she spoke. "You buried one of the Shoal's medallions at the crossroads, and over the years it's been gathering power somehow. And now you're ready to use it, to get you the Art."

"Good... " said Buddenbaum, "go on.. - "

She pushed the fire-plate aside, and started to lay the cards out on the table, one by one. "The Jaff taught me something," she said, "when we were together under the Grove. I was looking at the cross he had, trying to work out what the symbols meant-these symbols"-she waved the cards. "And he told me: to understand something is to have it. When you know what a symbol means, it's no longer a symbol. You have the thing itself in your head, and that's the only place anything needs to be."

She looked down at the cards for a moment. When she glanced back up at Buddenbaum his gaze was icy. "Everything dissolves at the crossroads, doesn't it'? Flesh and spirit, past and future, it all turns into mind." She had found all the cards picturing the body spreadeagled at the center of the cross, and now proceeded to assemble them.

"But for you to access the Art, you need to have all the possibilities there in the stew. There at the crossroads. The human pieces. The animal pieces. The dreaming pieces-" She stopped. Stared at him. "How am I doing?" she said.

"I think you know," said Buddenbaum.

"So-where was I?"

"Dreaming pieces."

"Oh yes. And the last pieces, of course. The pieces that complete the pattern." She had the very card in her hand: the symbol at the top of the vertical arm. She turned it to him. "The pieces of divinity."

Buddenbaum sighed.

"The Jai-Wai," she said, and tossed the card down onto the table.

There was twenty, maybe thirty seconds of silence. Finally Buddenbaum said, "Can you imagine how difficult it's been to arrange this? to find a place where I had a hope of all these forces coming at some point or other? This wasn't the only spot I buried a cross, of course. I put them all over. But there was something about this place-"

"And what was that?"

He considered a moment. "A little girl called Maeve O'Connell," he said.

"Who?" "She's the one who buried the cross for me, back before this little burg existed. I remember hearing her father call her name-Maeve, Maeve-and I thought, this is a sign. The name's Irish. It's a spirit who comes to men in their dreams. And then when I met the father, I realized how easy it would be to inspire him. Make him build me a honeypot of a city, where every manner of creature came, and there in the middle of it, my little cross could be gathering power."

"Everville's your creation?"

"No, I can't make that claim. The inspiration was mine, but that's all. The rest was made by ordinary men and women going about their lives."

"So did you keep an eye on it?"

"For the first three or four years I came looking, but the seed had failed to take. The father had died on the mountain, and the daughter had married a damn strange fellow from the other side, so people kept their distance."

"But the city got built anyway?"

"Eventually, though I'm damned if I know how. I didn't come back here for a long time, and when I did, what do you know? There was Everville. Not quite the Byzantium I'd envisaged but it had its possibilities. I knew that wanderers from the Metacosm came here now and again, for sentimental reasons. And they crossed paths with Sapas Humana, and they went their way, and all the while the medallion gathered its powers underground."

"You waited a long time." "I had to be ready, in myself. Randolph Jaffe isn't the only one who lost his wits thinking he could handle the Art.

As I said before, I've lived several lifetimes, thanks to Rare Utu and her buddies. I've used the years to rarefy myseIL"

"And now you're ready?"

"Now I'm ready. Except that one piece of the puzzle I need has deserted me."

"So-you want me to bring them to you."

"If you'd be so kind," Buddenbaum said, with a little inclination of his head.

"If I succeed you'll help me keep the lad from destroying the city?"

'-Mat's my promise."

"How do I know you won't just piss off into your higher state of being and let the rest of us go down in flames?"

"You have to believe I won't break the last promise I made as a mortal man," Buddenbaum replied.

it wasn't an airtight offer, Tesla thought, but it was probably the best she was going to get. While she was turning it over, Buddenbaum said,

"One more thing."

"What's that'

"Once you've brought the Jai-Wai to the crossroads, I want I you to get out of the city."

'Why?" "Because this afternoon, when I had everything in place, the working failed because of you."

"How'd you work that out?"

"There was no other reason," Buddenbaum replied. "You're a Nunciate. The power couldn't choose which of us to flow to, so it stayed where it was."

"All right. So I'll get out."

"Now I'm the one who needs the promise."

"You've got it."

"Good enough," Buddenbaum said. "Now-why don't you bum the cards?"

"Why?"

"As a... gesture of good will."

Tesla shrugged. "Whatever," she said, and gathering them up she tossed them into the slow flames. they caught quickly, flaming up.

"Pretty," said Buddenbaum, rising from his chair. "I'll' see you at the crossroads then."

"I'll be there."

She felt the presence of the enemy the moment she stepped out into the street. Memories of Point Zero came flickering back into her head-the desolation, the dust, 4nd the lad, fising like a seething tide. they would be here soon, bringing their madness and their appetite for madness, turning over this city, whose only crime was to have been founded in the name of transcendence.