And once it was trampled, what then? Out into the Americas, to find new victims, new adherents? She knew from her years of wandering that it would not go unwelcoined. There were people across this divided nation hungry for catastrophe, plotting to welcome the millennium in with bloodshed and destruction. She'd heard them at diner counters, muttering into their coffee; seen them at the side of highways, raging and raging; brushed by them in busy streets (passing for sane, most of them; dressed and polished and civil): people who wanted to murder the world for disappointing them.

Once the lad arrived they wouldn't need to talk to themselves any longer. they wouldn't need to berate heaven, or put on smiles when all they wanted to do was scream. they would have their day of wrath, and the power she'd seen unleashed at Point Zero would be suddenly inconsequential.

God help her, in her time, she might have numbered herself among them. he didn't have to go far to find the Jai-Wai. A hundred yards from the Nook she heard a great commotion, and seeking out its source found the chief of police, along with two of his officers, attempting to calm a mob of perhaps fifty Evervillians, all of whom were demanding he do something to protect their city. Many of them had flashlights and had them trained on the target of their are. Ashen and sweaty, Gilholly did his best to calm them, but circumstances were against him. The lad's influence was getting stronger as they descended from the Heights, and the already demented crowd was steadily losing its grip of reality. People started to sob uncontrollably or shriek at the limit of their lungs. Somebody in the throng began speaking in tongues.

Realizing he was losing what little grip he had, Gilholly pulled out his gun and fired it into the air. The crowd simmered down a little.

"Now listen up!" Gilholly yelled above the murmurs and sobs. "If we just stay calm we can ride this out. I want everybody to go to the Town Hall, and we'll wait there until help arrives."

"Help from where?" somebody asked.

"I got calls out all over, don't you worry," Gilholly replied. "We'll have support from Molina and Silverton in the next half hour. We're going to get the lights back on and-'

"What about what's going on on the mountain?"

"It's all going to get taken care of," Gilholly said. "Now will you please clear the streets so when help gets here nobody's hurt?" He pushed through the crowd, beckoning for folks to follow. "Come on, now! Let's get going."

As the mob began to move off Tesla glimpsed a white dress and, making her way towards it, found Rare Utu, her girlish guise as flawless as ever, watching the scene with a smile on her face. It broadened into a grin at the sight of Tesla.

"They're all going to die," she beamed.

"Won't that be fun," Tesla dead-panned.

"Have you made up your mind?"

"Yes," said Tesla. "I accept the offer. With one proviso."

"And what's that?" said Yie, stepping out of the retreating crowd wearing his human face.

"I don't want to be the one to tell Buddenbaum. You have to do it."

"Why do we even need to bother?" Haheh said, emerging at Yie's side.

"Because he served you all those years," Tesla said. "And he deserves to be treated with some dignity."

"He's not going to perish the moment we leave," Haheh ' pointed out.

"He'll have a quick decline as the years catch up with him, but it won't be so terrible."

"Then tell him that," Tesla said. She looked back at Rare Utu. "I don't want him coming after me with a machete, because I took his job."

"I understand," the girl said.

Yie scowled. "This is thefirvt and last time we accede to your desires," he said. "You should be grateful to be serving us."

"I am," Tesia said. "I want to tell you wonderful stories and show you wonderful sights. But first@'

"Where is he?" said Habeh.

"At the crossroads."

"Thank God for the darkness," Maeve said as they made their way through the murky streets. "I swear if I saw this ugliness in the plain light of day I'd weep." She demanded to be set down in front of the Hamburger Hangout, so that she could be appalled. "Ugly, ugly, ugly," she said.

"It looks like something made for children."

"Don't break your heart over it," Raul said. "It won't be standing much longer."

'We were going to build a city that could standforever," Maeve said.

"Nothing lasts that long," said Harry.

"Not true," said Maeve. "Great cities become legends. And legends don't die." She scowled at the Hamburger Hangout. "Anything would be better than this," she said. "A pile of rubble! A hole in the ground!"

"Can we get a move on?" Harry said, glancing back wards the mountain. They'd been meandering through the treets for maybe twenty minutes now, with the O'Connell woman confidently giving directions back to the place where she'd lived, though it was increasingly plain that she was lost.

Meanwhile Kissoon and his ladic legion had been descending from the Heights. Their tangled mass was now no longer visible, which surely meant they'd reached the bottom of the slope. Perhaps they were already in the city, and the demolition Maeve so relished underway.

"It's not far now," the old woman said, making her way unaided to the nearest intersection and looking in all directions. "That way!" she said, pointing.

"Are you sure?" said Harry.

"I'm sure," she said. "It was at the very center of the city, my whorehouse. The first house that was ever raised, in fact."

'Did you say whorehouse?"

'Of course they burned it down. Did I tell you that? Burned down half the neighborhood at the same time, when the fire spread." She turned back to Harry. "Yes, I said whorehouse. How do you think I built my city? I didn't have a river. I didn't have gold. So we built a whorehouse, Coker and me, and I filled it with the most beautiful women I could find. And that brought the men. And some of them stayed. And married. And built houses of their own. And"-she opened her arms, laughing out loud-"lo and behold! There was Everville!" iv Laughter? Bosley thought, hearing Maeve's amusement echo through the streets. How pitiful. Somebody had lost their mind in all this chaos.

He was sheltering in the doorway of the Masonic Hall at present, to keep himself (and the baby he was still carrying) out of the way of people and vehicles. Ten yards down the block, Larry had the Lundy kid up against the wall and was interrogating him. He wanted to know where the sodomite Buddenbaum was hiding out, but Seth wasn't letting on.

Every time Seth shook his head Larry traded him a blow: a tap sometimes; sometimes not. Waits and Alstead hung around at a distance. Waits had broken into Dan's Liquor Store on Coleman Street, and got himself a couple of bottles of bourbon, so he was quite happy watching the interrogation over Larry's shoulder. Alstead was sitting on the sidewalk, with his shirt hiked up, examining the abrasions he'd suffered during the earlier skirmish with Lundy. He had already told Larry that when the questioning was finished he would be taking over. Bosley didn't give much for Lundy's chances.

Quietly, he began to pray. Not just for his own salvation, and that of the child, but so that he could explain to the Lord that this was not the way he'd intended things to be. Not remotely.

"I just wanted to do your will," he said, doing his best to ignore the sound of Seth's moans, and of the blows that kept landing. "But everything's got so confused. I don't know what's right any more, Lord... "

A fresh chorus of cries rose from somewhere nearby, and drowned out his pleas. He closed his eyes, trying hard to keep his thoughts coherent. But with one of his senses sealed he became aware of information the others were receiving. There was a smell in the air; like the garbage behind the diner in a heatwave, only tinged with a sweetness that made it all the fouler. And along with the stench there was a sound, deep in his head, as though somebody was testing a tuning fork against his skull.