“Yes, I’ve been watching. D’you think I’m no good at my work?”

“Did you enjoy it?” Eric asked nastily.

“Not a bit. Nor did I dislike it. It’s all part of my job. I wish you’d understand that. I’m not paid to make value judgments, Mr. Abbott. Just to carry out directions. Like my subordinates.” The four men who’d followed him into the living room shifted their stances slightly, commenting without words.

“These are not a couple of ignorant thugs, Mr. Abbott, like the two you encountered in Phoenix. I don’t think you can make much trouble for them. For your own sake and good health I’d advise you not to try.”

Eric listened but didn’t hear. No way was he leaving Lisa in the company of these people without putting up a fight, however desperate, however futile. He thought of making a run for the bedroom door. Would Lisa let him in? Would she help him? From the manner in which she’d reacted to Tarragon’s command, he doubted it.

She said he’d confused her. Tarragon had just finished saying the same thing. Did she love him or not? Or had she simply mouthed the words, perhaps for Tarragon’s benefit? His triumph of moments earlier had been dumped indifferently at his feet. He almost looked forward to the coming, pointless fight. It would be a pleasure to incur some pain that might drown out the pain he was feeling now.

“You’re an interesting man, Eric Abbott,” Tarragon was saying, “but not interesting enough to occupy me further. I have other business that needs taking care of. I should have pegged you for a fanatic earlier and had you picked up outside the restaurant.”

“You wouldn’t have done that,” Eric told him. “Too many witnesses.”

“Perhaps. You learn fast, Mr. Abbott. Not that it’s going to do you any good. I offered you safe passage out of this, practically begged you to leave. You wouldn’t listen to me.”

“And what now?” Eric asked him. “Do I end up like Polikartos?”

“I don’t know. I hope not. There will be a lot of questions first. After … I don’t know. What happens from now on is out of my hands. I take no responsibility for it. You’re responsible for whatever happens. You had several chances to climb out of the hole you’ve dug for yourself, and you’ve persisted in digging it deeper. Whether grave or metaphor, I don’t know.”

“Lisa,” Eric called toward the door. “Lisa, come out.”

“You’re a professional man,” Tarragon was murmuring. “You understand my position.”

“Lisa, come on out!” Suddenly it occurred to him there might be others in the bedroom. They might have clamped a gag on her, might be holding her back. There was no way to tell. There was only the blank door and Tarragon’s four men moving toward him, spreading out to take him from four sides. He stepped up onto the couch, trying to watch all of them at once.

Tarragon looked disappointed; his subordinates, unconcerned. Eric abruptly decided one of two things would now happen: either he would somehow make his escape and get to the bottom of all this, or else these four would beat the crap out of him.

“C’mon then,” he said encouragingly, teasingly, making a rude gesture with one hand.

“We’re coming,” said one of the men in a flat, unpleasant voice.

“Will you come along nice and quiet, Mr. Abbott?” asked another. “This is your last chance. We don’t want to hurt you.”

“But I want you to hurt me,” Eric told him with a grin. “Come on, try to hurt me. Maybe I can hurt one or two of you before you take me out.”

“I don’t think so, Mr. Abbott.” The speaker looked to Tarragon for instructions, commented, “This guy’s nuts, you know?”

“I think not, Jerome, but as I’ve told him, analysis isn’t our department. Try to keep him as intact as possible, okay?”

“If you say so, sir.” The one named Jerome was now the nearest to Eric. He stepped forward quickly and reached for Eric’s right leg. The others moved an instant after, the well-trained team rapidly tightening the circle.

“Don’t make this hard on yourself, Mr. Abbott,” Jerome said as he touched Eric’s leg.

Eric swung an arm downward, intending to knock the other man’s arm aside. There was a muffled snap, thoroughly sickening for so slight a sound. To his credit, Jerome didn’t scream. His face contorted and he clutched at his shattered right wrist. At the same time the other three jumped on their quarry.

Eric found himself going backward over the couch. Two thick arms locked around his neck while the other pair fought to get his arms and legs under control.

He kicked out blindly. One of the men went flying, slammed into the ceiling. He hung spread-eagled and imbedded in the fiberfill insulation like a fly in amber, staring blankly at the floor. Either the ceilings here were thinner than those in old buildings in Phoenix or else he’d kicked harder. Eric didn’t know. He didn’t know a damn thing, except that he had to get away from this place and these men so he could save Lisa.

His head jerked backward as the man who had him around the neck yanked hard. Convulsively he tried to pull against the pressure. His neck snapped forward and the man who’d been trying to cut off his wind flew over him, over the couch, spinning and tumbling like a rag doll. There was a tremendous crash as he went through the safety glass of the balcony doors. Splinters flew everywhere and for a few seconds the white room was full of flying diamonds mixed with blood. Eric felt as if he were drifting inside a kaleidoscope, full of bright, colorful destruction. Around him people were yelling softly. It was carnival time and he was with Charlie and Gabriella.

They were on a ride called Moons of Saturn, in a little plastic car that simulated zero-gee. As it went every which way at once, they could look out through the transparent acrylic and see the lights of the state fair mesh with the sky. Machines and kids and hawkers and carnies filled the air with an undisciplined tintinnabulation while in the distance the white was as bright in his eyes as in his ears.

The man who’d gone through the balcony doors vanished. He might have screamed once as he fell eighty floors toward the East River.

The one remaining thug hung on to Eric desperately now while Jerome raised his good hand. The heel of his palm moved in a straight thrust toward Eric’s nose, intent on shattering bone and sending the fragments into his brain.

Off in the white distance Eric thought he could hear Tarragon shout, “Don’t kill him!,” but Jerome wasn’t listening to his boss anymore. All sense of civility and dark humor was gone now, destroyed as thoroughly as the glass doors and two other men.

The palm made contact. It certainly should have killed him. Instead Eric felt only mild discomfort near the center of his face. His nose did not break, did not even bend.

Jerome pulled back, voiceless now. Eric found he was sickened by the carnage around him. Blood dripped onto the white carpet from the man still imbedded in the ceiling. He reached up and pulled the last man off his back, threw him into the retreating Jerome. The impact sent them tumbling into the crystal bar. Glasses jumped off shelves and bottles fell over, spilling golden fluid. The wine dispenser jammed in the OPEN position, and claret poured in a steady stream across the floor, less viscous than the blood it mixed with.

Something stung him in the left buttock. He jerked around to see a now transformed Tarragon standing behind him. As he stumbled clear Eric reached down and yanked out the hypodermic. A pressure syringe: no needle. It looked like a toy. He pinched it to see if it was real. It broke beneath his fingers. That was funny, because it was high-impact plastic. Can’t trust any manufacturers these days, he thought hysterically.

Tarragon was watching him closely. As Eric continued to stand on the couch and smile back, Tarragon’s expression of uncertainty was replaced by one of utter terror. His composure was gone.

“I’m going now,” Eric told him quietly. “I’m not taking Lisa, because I’m confused and I don’t know what I’m going to do next, and I don’t want to chance her getting hurt. But you can’t keep us apart. You can’t keep us apart.”

“You should be on the floor,” Tarragon was mumbling. “You should be half-dead and unconscious. There was enough TLC in that syringe to put a hundred men down. Why the hell aren’t you unconscious?” He made it sound like an accusation. Eric almost felt like apologizing.

The dream-state persisted as he stepped down off the cushions. Reality was something fondly remembered. “I’m going now,” he said again. The door was locked from the outside. “That’s a neat trick,” he told Tarragon, who was staring at him wide-eyed. “How’d you do it?”

A thin trickle of spittle clung to a corner of Tarragon’s mouth. He didn’t look very confident or sophisticated just then.

“You should be unconscious,” he said still again.

Eric had no answer for the recycled comment. He put a hand on the door handle and gave an experimental tug. Something inside moaned. The handle was welded in place and so were the security hinges. It was the lock that finally gave, with an explosive ping.

A startled curse sounded in the lobby as the lock burst from the door and shot across the chamber to ricochet off the far wall. Now the door opened normally, Eric thought as he stepped out.

There were three more men waiting for him. They looked surprised to see him unescorted. From behind Eric, Tarragon suddenly started shouting.

“No hands! Don’t try to touch him! Shoot him, shoot him!”

At this the men backed off warily and drew small pistols. Eric walked blithely past them and thumbed the elevator call, not caring much what happened now. Nothing could happen or it already would have, wouldn’t it? Couldn’t it? A giggle rose in his throat, and he rushed to smother it. Behind him the three men eyed him confusedly as he waited for the elevator.

Tiny pins pricked his back and legs and a muscle twitched once in his neck. He ignored this as he stepped into the elevator. More curses sounded behind him. As he turned in the cab he had a last glimpse of three startled faces. There was a whirr as the doors closed and the descent commenced.

He used the time to pick the hypo darts out of his back, thinking crazily that the minute holes might not show up on his new suit. As he held one of the tiny syringes up to the elevator light he could see a residual smear of blue liquid still left inside. Idly, he wondered what it was. A narcoleptic similar to the stuff Tarragon had injected into his backside? It didn’t matter, because it had no effect on him either.

Far above, Lisa Tambor lay motionless on her bed. During the sound of fighting in the living room she’d held herself and cried.

Then the unexpected: silence. More unexpected still, Eric’s voice in the silence, saying calmly, “I’m going now.” That’s when the tears had stopped, to be replaced with first confusion and then a desperate, rising hope.

Maybe it was at that moment she realized she really did love him, impossible as it seemed. The realization struck in the face of everything she knew and went against everything she stood for, everything she was. But there it was.