He staggered out of the bedroom and onto the landing. To his surprise they were not waiting for him there.

At the top of the stairs he hesitated. He was not a brave man; nor was he foolish. Tomorrow he could mourn her: but for tonight she was simply gone from him, and there was nothing to be done but preserve himself from whoever'd done this. Whoever! Why didn't he admit the name to himself? Mamoulian was responsible: it had his signature. And he was not alone. The European would never have laid his purged hands on human flesh the way someone had on Yvonne; his squeamishness was legendary. But it was he who'd given her that half-life to live after the murder was done. Only Mamoulian was capable of that service.

And he would be waiting below now, wouldn't he, in the undersea world at the bottom of the stairs? Waiting, as he'd waited so long, for Toy to traipse down to join him.

"Go to Hell," Toy whispered to the dark below, and walked (the urge was to run, but common sense counseled otherwise) along the landing toward the spare bedroom. With every step he anticipated some move from the enemy, but none came. Not until he reached the door of the bedroom anyway.

Then, as he turned the handle, he heard Yvonne's voice behind him:

"Willy..." The word was better formed than before.

For the briefest moment he felt his sanity in doubt. Was it possible that if he turned now she would be standing at the bedroom door as disfigured as memory suggested; or was that all a fever-dream?

"Where are you going?" she demanded to know.

Downstairs, somebody moved.

"Come back to bed."

Without turning to refuse her invitation, Toy pushed the door of the spare bedroom open, and as he did so he heard somebody start up the stairs behind him. The footsteps were heavy; their owner eager.

There was no key in the lock to delay his pursuer, and no time to drag furniture in front of the door. Toy crossed the lightless bedroom in three strides, threw open the French windows, and stepped onto the small wrought-iron balcony. It grunted beneath his weight. He suspected it would not hold for long.

Below him, the garden was in darkness, but he had a fair idea of where the flower beds lay, and where the paving stones. Without hesitation-the footsteps loud at his back-he clambered over the balcony. His joints complained at this exertion, and more so when he lowered himself over the other side until he was hanging by his hands, suspended by a grip that was every second in danger of giving out.

A din in the room he'd left drew his glance; his pursuer, a bloated thug with bloody hands and the eyes of something rabid, was in the room-was crossing now toward the windows, growling his displeasure. Toy rocked his body as best he could, praying to miss the paving he knew was directly beneath his bare feet and land in the soft earth of the herbaceous border. There was little chance to fine-tune the maneuver. He let go of the balustrade as the obesity reached the balcony, and for what seemed a long time fell backward through space, the window diminishing above him, until he landed, with no more injury than a bruising, among the geraniums Yvonne had planted only the week before.

He got to his feet badly winded but intact, and ran down the moonlit garden to the back gate. It was padlocked, but he managed to climb over it with ease-adrenaline firing his muscles. There was no sound of further pursuit, and when he glanced back he could see the fat man was still at the French windows, watching his escape as though lacking the initiative to follow. Sick with a sudden excitement, he sprinted away down the narrow passage that led along the backs of all the gardens, caring only to put distance between himself and the house.

It was only when he reached the street, its lamps starting to go out now as dawn edged up-over the city, that he realized he was stark naked.

Marty had gone to bed a happy man. Though there was still much here he didn't understand, much which the old man-despite his promises of explanations-seemed pleased to keep obscured, finally none of that was his business. If Papa chose to have secrets, so be it. Marty had been hired to look after him, and it appeared that he was fulfilling that obligation to his employer's satisfaction. The results were there in the intimacies the old man had shared with him, and in the thousand pounds beneath his pillow.

Euphoria prevented sleep: Marty's heart seemed to be beating at twice its usual rate. He got up, slipped on his bathrobe, and tried a selection of videos to take his mind off the day's events, but the boxing tapes depressed him; the, pornography too. He wandered downstairs to the library, found a dog-eared space opera, then slipped back to his room, making a detour to the kitchen for a beer.

Carys was in his room when he got back, dressed in jeans and a sweater, barefoot. She looked frayed, older than her nineteen years. The smile she offered him was too stage-managed to convince.

"You don't mind?" she said. "Only I heard you walking about."

"Don't you ever sleep?"

"Not often."

"Want some beer?"

"No thanks."

"Sit down," he said, throwing a pile of clothes off the single chair for her. She deposited herself on the bed, however, leaving the chair for Marty.

"I have to talk to you," she said.

Marty laid down the book he'd chosen. On the cover a naked woman, her skin a fluorescent green, emerged from an egg on a twin-sunned planet. Carys said:

"Do you know what's going on?"

"Going on? What do you mean?"

"Haven't you felt anything odd in the house?"

"Like what?"

Her mouth had found its favorite shape; corners turned down in exasperation.

"I don't know... it's difficult to describe."

"Try."

She hesitated, like a diver at the edge of a high board, then took the plunge.

"Do you know what a sensitive is?"

He shook his head.

"It's someone who can pick up waves. Thought waves."

"Mind reading."

"In a way."

He gave her a noncommittal look. "Is it something you can do?" he said.

"Not do. I don't do anything. It's more like it's done to me."

Marty leaned back in the chair, flummoxed.

"It's as though everything gets sticky. I can't shake it off. I hear people talking without them moving their lips. Most of it's meaningless: just rubbish."

"And it's what they're thinking?"

"Yes."

He couldn't find much to say in response, except that he doubted her, and that wasn't what she wanted to hear. She'd come for reassurance, hadn't she?

"That's not all," she said. "I see shapes sometimes, around people's bodies. Vague shapes... like a kind of light."

Marty thought of the man at the fence; of how he'd bled light, or seemed to. He didn't interrupt her, however.

"The point is, I feel things other people don't. I don't think it's particularly clever of me, or anything like that. I just do it. And the last few weeks I've felt something in the house. I get odd thoughts in my head, out of nowhere; I dream... horrible things." She halted, aware that her description was getting vaguer, and she risked what little credibility this monologue had if she went on.

"The lights you see?" Marty said, backtracking.

"Yes."

"I saw something like them."

She leaned forward.

"When?"

"The man who broke in. I thought I saw light coming from him. From his wounds, I suppose, and his eyes and his mouth." Even as he finished the sentence he was shrugging it off as if fearful of contagion. "I don't know," he said. "I was drunk."

"But you saw something."

"-Yes," he conceded, without pleasure.

She got up and crossed to the window. Like father like daughter, he thought: window freaks, both of them. As she stared out across the lawn-Marty never drew the curtains-he had ample opportunity to look at her.