"In other words he told them he had access to twenty-seven snakes."

"Venomous. Except they weren't. So Orest got bit for nothing. The jerk."

"Suddenly he's a jerk."

'They had all this antivenom which they couldn't even use. The first four minutes."

"How does he feel?"

"How would you feel if you were a jerk?"

"Glad to be alive," I said.

"Not Orest. He dropped out of sight. He went into complete seclusion. Nobody's seen him since it happened. He doesn't answer the door, he doesn't answer the phone, he doesn't show up at school. The total package."

I decided to wander over to my office and glance at some final exams. Most of the students had already departed, eager to begin the routine hedonism of another bare-limbed summer. The campus was dark and empty. There was a trembling mist. Passing a line of trees, I thought I sensed someone edge in behind me, maybe thirty yards away. When I looked, the path was clear. Was it the gun that was making me jumpy? Does a gun draw violence to it, attract other guns to its surrounding field of force? I walked on quickly toward Centenary Hall. I heard footsteps on gravel, a conspicuous crunch. Someone was out there, on the edge of the parking area, in the trees and the mist. If I had a gun, why was I scared? If I was scared, why didn't I run? I counted off five paces, looked quickly left, saw a figure moving parallel to the path, in and out of deep shadow. I broke into a shambling trot, my gun hand in my pocket, clutching the automatic. When I looked again, he wasn't there. I slowed down warily, crossed a broad lawn, heard running, the meter of bounding feet. He was coming from the right this time, all-out, closing fast. I broke into a weaving run, hoping I'd make an elusive target for someone firing at my back. I'd never run in a weave before. I kept my head down, swerved sharply and unpredictably. It was an interesting way to run. I was surprised at the range of possibilities, the number of combinations I could put together within a framework of left and right swerves. I did a tight left, widened it, cut sharply right, faked left, went left, went wide right. About twenty yards from the end of the open area, I broke off the weave pattern and ran as fast and straight as I could for a red oak. I stuck out my left arm, went skidding around the tree in a headlong cranking countermotion, simultaneously using my right hand to pluck the Zumwalt from my jacket pocket, so that I now faced the person I'd been fleeing, protected by a tree trunk, my gun at the ready.

This was about as deft a thing as I'd ever done. I looked into the heavy mist as my attacker approached in little thudding footfalls. When I saw the familiar odd loping stride, I put the gun back in my pocket. It was Winnie Richards, of course.

"Hi, Jack. At first I didn't know who it was, so I used evasive tactics. When I realized it was you, I said to myself that's just the person I want to see."

"How come?"

"Remember that time you asked me about a secret research group? Working on fear of death? Trying to perfect a medication?"

"Sure-Dylar."

"There was a journal lying around the office yesterday. American Psychobiologist. Curious story in there. Such a group definitely existed. Supported by a multinational giant. Operating in the deepest secrecy in an unmarked building just outside Iron City."

"Why deepest secrecy?"

"It's obvious. To prevent espionage by competitive giants. The point is they came very close to achieving their objective."

"What happened?"

"A lot of things. The resident organizational genius, one of the forces behind the whole project, was a fellow named Willie Mink. He turns out to be a controversial fellow. He does some very, very controversial things."

"I'll bet I know the first thing he does. He runs an ad in a gossip tabloid asking for volunteers for a hazardous experiment. FEAR OF DEATH, it says."

"Very good, Jack. A little ad in some rinky-dink newspaper. He interviews the respondents in a motel room, testing them for emotional integration and about a dozen other things in an attempt to work up a death profile for each person. Interviews in a motel. When the scientists and the lawyers find out about this, they go slightly berserk, they reprimand Mink, they put all their resources into computer testing. Berserk official reaction." "But that's not the end of it."

"How right you are. Despite the fact that Mink is now a carefully observed person, one of the volunteers manages to slip through the screen of watchfulness and begins a program of more or less unsupervised human experimentation, using a drug that is totally unknown, untested and unapproved, with side effects that could beach a whale. Ah unsupervised well-built human."

"Female," I said.

"Very correct. She periodically reports to Mink in the very motel where he originally did his interviewing, sometimes arriving in a taxi, sometimes on foot from the shabby and depressing bus terminal. What is she wearing, Jack?"

"I don't know."

"A ski mask. She is the woman in the ski mask. When the others find out about Mink's latest caper, there is a period of prolonged controversy, animosity, litigation and disgrace. Pharmaceutical giants have their code of ethics, just like you and me. The project manager is kicked out, the project goes on without him."

"Did the article say what happened to him?"

"The reporter tracked him down. He is living in the same motel where all the controversy took place."

"Where is the motel?"

"In Germantown."

"Where's that?" I said.

"Iron City. It's the old German section. Behind the foundry."

"I didn't know there was a section in Iron City called Germantown."

'The Germans are gone, of course."

I went straight home. Denise was making check marks in a paperback book called Directory of Toll-Free Numbers. I found Babette sitting by Wilder's bed, reading him a story.

"I don't mind running clothes as such," I said. "A sweatsuit is a practical thing to wear at times. But I wish you wouldn't wear it when you read bedtime stories to Wilder or braid Steffie's hair. There's something touching about such moments that is jeopardized by running clothes."

"Maybe I'm wearing running clothes for a reason." "Like what?"

"I'm going running," she said. "Is that a good idea? At night?"

"What is night? It happens seven times a week. Where is the uniqueness in this?" "It's dark, it's wet."

"Do we live in a blinding desert glare? What is wet? We live with wet."

"Babette doesn't speak like this."

"Does life have to stop because our half of the earth is dark? Is there something about the night that physically resists a runner? I need to pant and gasp. What is dark? It's just another name for light."

"No one will convince me that the person I know as Babette actually wants to run up the stadium steps at ten o'clock at night."

"It's not what I want, it's what I need. My life is no longer in the realm of want. I do what I have to do. I pant, I gasp. Every runner understands the need for this."

"Why do you have to run up steps? You're not a professional athlete trying to rebuild a shattered knee. Run on plain land. Don't make a major involvement out of it. Everything is a major involvement today."

"It's my life. I tend to be involved." "It's not your life. It's only exercise."

"A runner needs," she said.

"I also need and tonight I need the car. Don't wait up for me. Who knows when I'll be back."

I waited for her to ask what mysterious mission would require me to get in the car and drive through the rain-streaked night, time of return unknown.

She said, "I can't walk to the stadium, run up the steps five or six times and then walk all the way back home. You can drive me there, wait for me, drive me back. The car is then yours."