No Reservation

 

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No Reservation

by Margaret Raymond

Copyright 2013 Margaret Raymond

No Reservation is a work of fiction; only the manic time in which it is set was real. The author has tried to express her profound respect for the Navajo nation while using its magical geography to tell a story. If there are errors, the responsibility is hers. If she entertains, she gleefully claims the credit.

*

TO OLIVIA

kind, generous, funny

never Wellesley

*

NO RESERVATION

PART ONE

One

"The Pentagon is speaking‒well, hinting really‒of sponsoring me‒I mean us‒of me and Doctor Manyblades‒for a Nobel Prize."

Dr. E. James Bayer lisped; he said "weally" and "sponsowing." He called his partner "Manybwades." Funny, coming from Elmer Fudd. He palmed his widow's peak, straightened his lab coat and beamed at the Chronicle writer's bosom.

Naomi Bessemer hunched over until her hair swung down. She jotted a note.

"Nobel. In chemistry, of course?"

"Yes. That is, not the prize for peace. Although 'peace' is part of its aftereffect, we spell the compound's name 'Peakspore' to emphasize the way it brings peak performance."

"It's a chemical weapon though, right? Your compound?" Her head stayed down.

The doctor's feet scuffed the linoleum. Uncertainty? Irritation? Neither; the prelude to a set speech. His lisp disappeared when the need for spontaneity was gone.

"Peakspore is an airborne behavior modification chemical designed under contract to the Pentagon. Conceivably, it can make war a thing of the past. Its purpose, from inception five years ago in 1960, has been to alter aggressive human behavior in such a way‒that is, in such a humane way‒as to produce cooperation. Yes, even in the enemy." He beamed again. "I‒we‒named it that because it affects everything pacifically. It makes peace."

Naomi’s innards stirred with her rising, viperish contempt. She couldn’t help herself; she spoke with the precise enunciation of sarcasm. "It brings peace? If I read your press release correctly, you've never tried it on a primate, much less a human being."

Pregnant pause.

The lab on the Berkeley campus stank of chemicals and fur and rotting flowers, and rustled with the sound of caged rodents. Naomi and Bayer faced one another (eye-to-eye; he was exactly her five-foot-three) across a deep sink set between shelves of retorts, test tubes and alembics; curved and glittering images of curved and glittering glass. The effect was eerie, but less fantastic than the man's inflated claims for an untried weapon. Or pacifier.

Bayer was hot copy for two reasons: an orphan, he'd been raised on a sheep ranch in Arizona but taken his Ph.D. in chemistry at 18, which made him a boy wonder. Six years later, in 1960, he had received the military grant which funded two chairs and brought in exotic, Najavo Dr. Dustin Manyblades, which was a shrewd and newsworthy political move.

A man wearing a green smock emerged from beyond an alcove full of small cages. A contemplative-looking shoat was draped across his forearm. His long hair rose stiff along a center part and was held at his nape in a bun. Manyblades: Bayer's associate. Or, rumor sneered, the other Pentagon sellout. Naomi planned to get a statement.

Bayer's lips were still compressed with irritation. Naomi was correct about the lack of testing, but on the point of losing her interview, her story, and a couple of freelance rewrites for The Realist and The Los Angeles Times. She could use the money.

She half-turned toward the alcove. Her metal camera swung on its shoulder strap and its sharp corner gouged the cabinet, then her thigh. She said, "The literature you provide says your test animals are extra-intelligent, doctor; are those the ones? Of course there are rumors..." Bayer nodded and crossed his arms. She smiled for him, a girlish transformation. "...and the people spreading them are mostly, well, incredulous. How intelligent are your animals?"

He cleared his throat. His lisp returned for a moment. "Actuawy, that is some of the rodent population we have used. I'm not completely suah, excuse me‒sure‒how intelligent they are. Doctor Manyblades and I‒that's him with the pig‒have kept good notes, but some of the rats..." His small eyes lit with inspiration. "I'll show you." He headed for the alcove, his glass images rising, curving and falling.

Manyblades had the pig on a counter, just visible to her between the tiers of glass. He took a syringe and red-labeled ampoule from a high shelf and prepared to administer a shot. Bayer returned. He carried a white rat the size of a chicken.

Naomi jerked. "Jesus!"

Bayer grinned. He set the monstrosity into the deep sink between them. The rat’s feet skittered. It looked at Naomi with pink eyes. It stank of something. She thought it hissed.

Bayer’s lisp was gone again. "This animal is four years old. Its intelligence is off every known scale for rodents, so I have no idea how bright it is. As a matter of fact, I hold it responsible for a little trick the rodents have. At feeding time, they thump in unison."

"I beg your pardon?"

The rat stood on its hind legs and again made eye contact with her. She backed away. Something weird happened to her sight; alembics twinkled, sounds tinkled; even her breath whistled in her tightening chest. Bayer’s eyes glittered.

Manyblades broke the spell, calling across the laboratory while still administering the shot. He said, "They seem to have created a group mind. When they’re hungry, all these guys stomp on the floor of their cages. The floors are tin. Makes a hell of a racket."

She broke eye contact with the rat. "In unison?"

He was grinning, still intent on the piglet. "Not really; it’s more like syncopation, like a steel-drum band. Deafening."

"No."

"Yes."

Bayer returned to his theme, now smiling too and no longer lisping at all. "The phenomenon tends to support our thesis that Peakspore can become a means to cooperation among people. Perhaps among peoples. This animal was the first to do it; the others merely cooperate. We’re testing the theory that they communicate with one another silently. Psychically. They grow quickly. And as you see, they can grow big. The larger animals mature more slowly: the sheep, the swine. Their body weight‒at any rate, it’s quite extraordinary. And of course, the General Staff in Washington are excited. They tell me, us..."

"Is that what Dr. Manyblades is giving that pig? Peakspore?"

"Yes. This is a second set of tests, involving dilute liquid injections instead of gas."

"But you haven't tried it on primates. In any form."

Bayer froze. Manyblades frowned and paused without turning. He tossed a cotton swab into a wastebasket. The lab, even the animals in the alcove, was silent.

"Not unduh contwolled conditions."

"Oh? Then a primate has been exposed. What happened?"

That tableau again: Naomi studied the little chemist, the immense rat and the Navajo with the magic needle. No, maybe the moment only seemed strange, the little professor and his Indian sidekick, weird. But something was not being said; something was wrong. And she'd have to get hold of some of that stuff to find out what it was. Really.

A face appeared at the hall door and called Bayer to the phone. He excused himself and left her in the defensive hands of Dustin Manyblades.

Manyblades was tall and skinny, with features planed across a broad matrix. His deep-set eyes were intense. His body, shoulders to hips, was a muscled wedge. He turned Naomi on.

But he was suddenly busy. The piglet squawked, leapt, and sprawled onto the floor. Manyblades chuckled uncomfortably, retrieved it, then inspected its trotters with studious attention as he headed with it through the alcove. There must have been a heavy door; when he opened it, the quiet lab was flooded with grunts and squeals.

Naomi's notebook rested on the professor's thick, spiral-bound press release titled (in block letters, centered)

PEAKSPORE: WEAPON OR TOOL?

She had read most of the material, even the formulas. It was November, 1965; war in Asia was the theme. Naomi was a dove.

And she wanted that stuff; to look at it, to shake it a little, to take maybe just a few drops to her dad's old lab at Stanford, where as the Bessemer heir she still had clout enough to get favors done.

She approached the counter which Manyblades had used, with the shelf above the sink. The shelf was just above her eye level, the top of the ampoule just within fingertip range. She reached across the counter, tipped the rack to within gripping distance, and tried to catch the ampoule as it fell. She missed. It dropped into the sink and broke; its contents evaporated in her face. The lab's flowery stench grew as rank as wet fur. Her eyes burned.

A man was at the hall door, a witness, so she grinned at him. His looks were striking; short, maybe five-foot-six, but he had the chiseled features and important nose associated with heroes.

"Dustin here?" he asked.

"He'll be back in a minute."

"'Kay. Tell him Ira came by."

"All right."

He was gone.

"Damn!" Manyblades grunted from the alcove as the heavy door banged shut again. Piggy footfalls skittered across the linoleum. Manflesh thudded against a cage. Naomi gathered the broken glass into a paper towel, careful of sharp corners, and dropped it onto a wad in the wastebasket. It made no sound. Dustin entered the lab stuffing his shirttail into his jeans.

"Got a minute, Dr. Manyblades?"

His grin faded. "Barely."

"I'm Naomi Bessemer. I write features, free-lance, for The Chronicle."

He scanned her smooth head, her expensive tweeds and polished penny loafers. "I know."

"Did Peakspore really work on that primate? Will it do everything Dr. Bayer claims?"

He didn't answer her question. Instead, "Do you mean will the Vietnamese stop fighting back? Throw down their arms? Beat swords into plowshares?"

"Approximately. I'm not as skeptical as I may sound, but the claims in this press packet sound premature. Would it make the Vietnamese cooperate with us? Or would they just stop resisting? Lose their will? I mean, is he describing a short-term, euphoric high like marijuana? Or is this stuff more like an airborne prefrontal lobotomy? According to the packet, on page‒68 I think‒yes, 68‒the largest, most intelligent test animal has been a 500-pound sow. I've heard about the relationship of men to swine, but now, really!"

He ignored her attempt at humor, except to compress his broad lips. "It's true; we infer what effect the chemical would have on humans. But so far it works on our test subjects at once, and it's pretty much benign. You've heard about genetics, right? Dr. Avery’s work a while back?" He folded his arms and rested his lean hip against the table. "You know, the recent discoveries..."

"Yes, I have. Maybe you saw my interview with Dr. Pauling in Scientific American last month."

He flicked her a look, impressed. "You’re that Bessemer?" He shifted his feet. "Well, Peakspore seems to alter the basic makeup of the animal, whether they get it as a gas or as an injection. That piglet I just shot is only two days old." He waited for Naomi's reaction, but her entire experience of pigdom was culinary. He explained. "It has full muscle coordination."

"Oh?"

"And it weighs just under twenty pounds."

"I think I see."

"That's a second-generation animal. It's mother was the sow in that admittedly bloated press release. But the piglet is pretty typical of second-generation animals' accelerated development. Peakspore alters genetics. Its effects may be basic enough to be inherited."

Naomi was finally impressed. "So it could maybe alter the makeup of the whole human race in a few generations, no matter how few people were exposed to it."

"That’s the theory, and at first I was concerned about it. But initial thought in 1944 was that the atomic bomb could ignite the atmosphere and smother us all. It didn’t, of course. Still, it’s heavy, isn't it?"

"Right on."

And that was all. Naomi excused herself, left the building and headed north across the campus. She wanted coffee before the transfer-bedeviled bus ride home to San Francisco. There was a coffee shop across Hearst surrounded by houses for the Greeks.

Sunset was coming; things were dark under the bushes and along the east walls. An amplified voice bounced from Sather Gate. Incoming fog piled from the west to directly overhead, but left a wedge of yellow sky under the Golden Gate Bridge.

The first pain struck. The sun's final ray stabbed so sharp that it pierced Naomi's eyes all the way to the back of her skull.

"Christ!"

Blinded and sick, she made for the shadows. Her belly bunched and corded. She vomited. She would faint. Her head would tear in two, front from back.

The attack lasted for maybe five minutes; felt like five days. Then she really did faint. She woke prone behind a hedge, crawled through, pulled her long hair free and climbed onto a bench, groggy.

"Oh, God."

Sight was in grays precisely outlined in black. Sounds were as particulate as the big rat's feet in Bayer's sink. There were other distractions. Voices like radios all around. Smells like burning fur, like heat on rocks, like mesquite and rabbit grass from her Arizona childhood. A crested jay shrieked and flew into a sketchy juniper.

Color returned at little at a time. The sun set and the campanile faded and resumed its pallor. Naomi wobbled toward Hearst. She chanted:

"In the gloaming secret dark, bellying clouds bruised purple by the fall of day are a backdrop to the fabled Golden Gate and the secret, chocolate headlands of Marin. Walking weakly uphill, the spunky suffering heroine sees force-lines strung between all living things. The menacing cottonwoods glow with an aura of life. She thinks she sees a coyote from the hills."

Obligingly, a scintillant coyote slipped between the shadows to Naomi's right. It looked at her, or through her, and did not pause. It trotted across the lawn to an immense cypress. Or maybe a spread of junipers.

"She probably does, too; see a coyote. But she's not sure, the debbil migraine returning, there's a foreboding in the air, and a thousand golden cobwebs. But the tiny ebon-maned heroine is undaunted; her destiny lies in that unpretentious coffee house serving north campus. Her destiny lies with coffee, Italian pastry and the paperback in her briefcase."

Things went black and she fell again. Then she was in the pit between triple boles of a cottonwood, clinging and crying. Her hands gripped the tree bark until her skin ripped. Beyond the tree a chasm contained horror and a musk-laden, arid wind, her own agonized keening, someone's death. She felt a leaden, furious sense of duty. And she could not be alone or she would go crazy.

The noises quieted and she was back on-campus. She found a Kleenex for the blood on her hands, then sucked her fingers like popsicles. She stepped back onto the walk. She would plan; make her brain behave.

The Beyer interview was good for the assignment plus two, maybe three filler-features, say sixty more bucks.

She must pick up ballet tickets tomorrow.

There was the heat pad at home for this headache.

The mayor was holding a press conference in the morning. It would rain, so she wouldn't wear the new shoes. She'd write up this interview as soon as she got home.

God, it was cold.

Naomi crossed to the coffee shop. She ordered an Alka-Seltzer, a double cappuccino and connole and sat with her back to the shingled interior wall. She pulled out Steppenwolf.

What had the press release said? Smart, cooperative baby animals. Not like Manyblades' independent shoat. And what sort of creeps were those men, making Weird-Science weapons for the Pentagon during an anti-war revolution?

She found her place in the book and winged the pages backward to make it lie flat. Took a sip of coffee.

Bayer wore short hair even though he couldn't be thirty. He was an orphaned shit-kicker from Arizona, so avid for publicity he called the papers with announcements almost every month. He'd mailed that preposterous release directly to her, right after the interview with Linus Pauling came out. And his handshake was one of those stupid power plays where he mashed her fingers together to hurt her. It takes more than a weak crotch to make a nut like E. James Bayer; she couldn't figure him. Something was weird. Unhinged.

But to the Theater for Madmen Only.

Or no, not yet:

"Eternal bliss through cooperaytion." She heard it again, crooned in Manyblade's voice as she was walking out of the lab. It had halted her in mid-step. "We'll all work together, all us species and races, and get things done!" He’d held another piglet at the bench; swiped the shot site with a tissue, then moved it delicately, watching Naomi because she’d turned back, to the pig's anus. He’d made kiss-kiss sounds; grinned a feral grin as he straightened.

He must be Bayer's age, or close to it, but without the tutored scholarships and grants and Anglo virtues of small talk and proper forks. Bright, almost handsome. Good hands. And exciting.

Forget it. She was through with Pentagon aparatchiks. She'd write Bayer up as a posturing fool. Spare the modest Indian. He was relatively new to the faculty, a sop to the egalitarian urgings of the chancellor. A good researcher; his publications on genetics impressed the big boys at Papa Salk‘s institute in La Jolla. She’d drop the piece at The Chronicle tomorrow and go to the press conference.

As she read and nibbled at the connole she rubbed the base of her skull. It felt bruised.

Two

Naomi's headache was gone the next day, and uncharacteristic charity had taken its place. The panhandlers on Mission Street each got a dollar and a smile; the bone-freezing drizzle was invigorating. The Chronicle's double security doors, into and out of the cramped vestibule, beeped fascistically to admit her, but it was a homey, welcoming sort of fascism.

She was patient, and even reasoned with, the irritating science editor named Jonson. She had presented Beyer as a fool; Jonson wanted a nice-nice personality sketch to run above the fold. She could see his point, so she said that. She thanked him prettily for his time. She offered against all common sense to tear up her contract for the piece, because in honesty, she admitted, she couldn't write that sort of pap about a dangerous man who had the ear of the Pentagon. That crap Peakspore was a danger to the whole of humankind. Jonson waffled; she produced the contract and placed it, smiling, on his littered desk beside her piece. She held his eyes with a stare of wolfish intensity. He spun his chair in a half-circle and back, baffled by his own capitulation, and shoved the contract back toward her briefcase.

Her mood lasted as she walked down Fifth, then Market, toward the civic plaza and the long water sculpture that imitated ocean waves.

In the rotunda of the City Hall she realized that her raincoat was soaked. She folded it inside-out as she climbed the marble stairway to the mezzanine. Journalists and lobbyists lounged against the balustrade. Mail boys and officeholders scurried. Her charity fled.

Smell of wild things. That sense of danger by the triple cottonwood. Dashes of light uniting everything alive. That animal in her gut which had intimidated the science editor grew big. Oh, god. Oh, god damn. She paused to exorcise it if she could, or to take things in.

No headache, no nausea. She heard things, though: ...bitious bitch, in her head, knowing it was not a thought of her own. Ass-kissing little...

Only people, only the private, two-faced, disgusting humanity she had embraced just an hour before. A pimply young man in a three-piece suit, bursting with mission, bustled into the Assessor's office. Two women in silk and four-inch heels emerged from an auxiliary hallway and stopped talking. The lounging men at the balustrade assessed their legs, the swing of their fannies, resumed talking. ...ing her boss.

Naomi swallowed bile and reminded herself this story might pay her dentist. She headed for the Mayor's office.

Better now. Not angry, just feisty. "Hunh," she said aloud, and her pretty grin bared pointed eye teeth. The traitor voice in her head began, An oily, graying chinless glad-handing criminal on the make held two dozen journalists in thrall this drizzly morning in the administrative offices of San Francisco’s City Hall...

She crowded into the anteroom of the Mayor's office, stashed her umbrella behind the door, flashed her press pass and nodded to the over-groomed secretary on her right. Tried again to quiet the voice: nearly succeeded. Edged her way around the secretary’s desk toward the door to the innermost inner sanctum, her customary station.

"Are you all right, Miss Bessemer?" the secretary asked from over her shoulder. Soaked!

"Sure; why?"

"You're a little pale around the gills."

"I’m fine. How is The Great Man this morning?"

The secretary was checking passes; she didn't turn. Schmu... "In love with the whole world."

"Must have got a little last night." This from the Sacramento Bee. He stopped in front of Naomi, a slouched six-feet two that entirely blocked her view of the podium in the far corner.

"You're depraved," the secretary crooned, nodding to the Oakland Tribune as he entered. "Actually, rumor has it he's being sounded by the Republicans for better things. If you quote me I‘ll deny it."

"Ah! And the rumor-monger is...?"

Naomi stopped listening and squirmed closer to the opening edge of the Mayor’s door. Hearing others’ thoughts would not do, though it had possibilities as entertainment and she might write them down. When she didn't need to work. Private Voices: a Tell-all Tale.

She realized her sour mood was growing, a minus; that the voice stilled as her irritation grew, a plus. And she realized that the smell of wet wool and old sweat, since she'd entered the room, didn’t fully account for the growing stench of rotted flowers.

The door beside her whooshed and the Mayor's assistant, then the City Attorney, and finally the Mayor himself emerged, sleek and beaming and nodding to faces he recognized. Naomi peeked into the paneled womb beyond the door, did a double-take and would have stared, except that the assistant, frowning, shut the door in her face.

She identified the smell; it was that rotten-flower lab on the Berkeley campus. Her wide-eyed gaze met that of a new reporter, short and dressed in messy tweeds. He stood at the opposite side of the Mayor's door. "Something?" he silently mouthed.

She nodded and pulled out notebook and pencil to note the names of the men she had seen. The reporter sidled across the doorway to read, but she turned toward him so he couldn't. Expressionless square face, dark hair, sparse eyebrows with a small scar below the right-hand one. Too unobtrusive, too unexceptional; it had to be deliberate. She glared a warning and flipped the page. Cute, though; she liked short men. "Scandal," she murmured to him as the officials took their places and His Honor began to speak. Golden cobwebs flashed and dazzled.

There were the usual preliminaries; recognition for bravery by a fireman, a special presentation from a boy scout with many medals on a sash. The Mayor was unctuous; Naomi, although she was used to the stuff and should be immune, was scornful.

Then came the conference’s centerpiece, announcing an "All-Out War" on sodomy. Police would be mustered, dial-a-fink installed.

Naomi was incredulous; in San Francisco the homosexual vote was pivotal. The Mayor's political blood oozed across the floor, a green ichor maggoty and puddling, the newsmen lapping it up and murmuring and scribbling. The City Attorney's sleek head bobbed in time to the Mayor's cadenced speech. And the Mayor continued, actually knowing not what he did.

"...eradicate the subversive elements that are vitiating the efficiency of government at its most basic level.... Known carriers of moral leprosy, eating at the very flesh and bones of the Body Politic..."

The startled rustle that filled the room was joined by those annoying voices, insistent and loud, so loud that at first she didn't hear the small man beside her murmur "...stupid sod!"

Then, and only half aware she did it: "Fool!" she called. Her voice was loud; the word, distinct; it echoed as the other journalists pivoted to stare.

The Mayor froze. He waited a beat. "May I continue?"

Whatever demon had possession of Naomi's tongue continued to speak.

"I hope for your sake you don't, your honor," she said. The Mayor nodded; someone dark moved toward her. Her voice rose. "This 'war' must have been engineered by those right-wing bible-thumpers in your office!" The dark man was closer, shoving bodies. Someone took her arm. "That criminal, and I use the term in its strictest sense, attorney at your elbow must be part of it! Can't you see it's political..." she continued yelling as someone very firm, very much in control, hustled her toward the door. "...SUICIDE!"

The word bounced into the rotunda. She was hauled along the balustrade. "Who is that woman!" she heard. Footsteps pursued, then slowed and stopped. She was yanked downstairs, across the City’s inlaid Great Seal, and through the portico opening on to Van Ness Avenue.

It was the inquisitive little reporter who had her; he stood quaking with suppressed laughter, shaking his head. "Lass! Lass!"

She continued to sputter. "But it's the truth! The head of the local Birchers is in the Mayor’s office with that fundamentalist preacher from Millbrae! And Watkins, the City Attorney, he's been after the mayoralty for‒ten years!" She was fumbling with her raincoat and trying to jam her pencil into her purse. "Where's my notebook? I can't find it. And my umbrella. I left it behind the door, didn't I? And so those three right-wingers must have cooked up this halfwit 'War on Sodomy', See? And they were probably behind that other time, his campaign against the school milk program. He’s such an idiot! He'll be hounded out of office, and they'll..." The man was holding her coat open; she stopped and thrust her arms into the sleeves.

"They did. They will. And so what, lass?"

His accent finally penetrated. She turned, tying the belt to her coat and accepting her purse. "Lass? That's the third time you've said that." This time when their eyes met she noticed the intensity of his look. He stuck out a hand and they shook.

"From Londonderry. Out of Belfast. Sean Colum of The Irish Times."

"Well, you've saved me, Mr. Colum, so now you're responsible for my needs. I need coffee."

"Done."

"And my name is Naomi Bessemer. I'm a free-lance feature writer. And I'm usually the soul of tact."

His sparse eyebrows lifted. "Truth?"

Three

They shared his umbrella and walked to Tommy's Joynt on Van Ness. As Naomi tried and failed to shake the smell of Peakspore and the annoying strings of light, he said he was vacationing in America and writing his impressions on spec. She asked about the Irish Question, he asked about the right wing in American politics. He professed fascination with her answers.

So they got coffee and baked beans from the cafeteria line and took a booth in the shadowed back room, where the seats were padded and the lighting consisted of a big uncurtained window. The web of lights, the voices, dissipated. Not the smell.

And now there wasn't a thing to say. Naomi poured a lot of cream into her coffee. "So; Northern Ireland, huh? I once subscribed to Ireland of the Welcomes."

"That's a different nation." He sipped, abstracted by something private.

"I know; I was making conversation."

"Forgive me." He mustered his full attention. "So you see a plot by the City Attorney to oust your Mayor in favor of a right-wing Republican, no doubt with even greater things in mind?"

"Yes. The Mayor's a life-long Democrat, put into office by the party machine. But one look at his record tells you he's available to the highest bidder. So when I saw him with Attorney Watkins, his ideological foe, then saw who was in his office waiting for him, I put two and two..."

"I see." He became absorbed again, staring toward the dazzle from the window. "Tell me, then," he said, "Why do you think this fabulous scheme would work? I mean, surely a simple statement denouncing buggery...?"

Naomi smiled. "This is cosmopolitan San Francisco. It's enthused by liberalism; it is the home of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Harry Bridges, Eric Hoffer; a tolerant place. And at least fifteen percent of the voters are homosexuals."

"So many?"

He was abstracted again. She ignored it, involved in politics. "And most voters are at least tolerant of homosexuality. Even the conservatives."

"Indeed."

"So that was stupidity up there in City Hall. You saw it; you called him a sod."

"I did." He paused, glanced at her, then smiled, crossed his arms on the table and leaned forward. "You were magnificent, Miss Bessemer. Foolhardy of course when you libeled the City Attorney, and perhaps not feeling well? Pale as a sheet, your eyes blazing. A tigress."

Wary of the sudden intimacy and his intent gaze, she didn't answer.

He pressed for a response. "You'll surely be barred from the premises."

"Don't know. Probably." Her baked beans were getting cold; she picked up her spoon. "I suppose it was this migraine, or just the stuffy room.... Anyhow it doesn't matter; science and scientists are really my field."

He lifted his mug. "You're good at that?"

"Can't help but be; I know all the researchers. At least on the west coast, I do." The baked beans were good and the brown bread even better. But she remained uneasy. Something about the man's shifting attention, or the room.

"Why?" he prompted.

"My dad. He was big-time science. I live my job. Dinners, weekends, vacations; I spend all my time with those people." Then, acknowledging the social norms within that circle, "and kowtowing."

"Kowtowing," he echoed.

"Researchers consider themselves a cut above."

"I see."

"As a general rule," she amended, wondering about yesterday, about the attractive Manysomething. She brightened her tone. "So I make a living off that specialty."

"Excellent." He caught her gaze and held it. "But what led to your foolhardy outburst at the City Hall? I mean, speaking of suicides..."

Naomi's wariness of the friendly, helpful stranger was suddenly gone, evaporated. The lights and nasty smell left. Things were fine, the man's questions were fine, everything would be fine tomorrow, she'd find an excuse for her behavior at City Hall and be forgiven. Maybe she shouldn't answer these impertinent questions, but on the other hand, what the hell? She broke eye contact and began.

"A disturbing thing happened to me on the Berkeley campus yesterday. I interviewed some chemists about a compound they've developed for the Pentagon, and I was exposed to it."

He straightened. "Indeed?"

"Yes. One of the chemists is maybe crazy. The other's a Navajo, and that may explain his involvement. If that‘s not a prejudiced thing to say. 'Blind ambition' and all that, you know?" Sean was examining each precious word as it fell from her lips; she had never had such an audience.

"The Indian's a better chemist than the crazy one, and has better publications. The disturbing part is what they designed the chemical for; 'anti-warfare', to be generous. The idea is that the Pentagon will gas Viet Nam and that will pacify everyone in southeast Asia and make them smarter."

Sean’s eyes went big. "I beg your pardon?"

"Exactly my own first reaction. Yes, more intelligent. The press release claims the chemical will restructure a person's genetic makeup and make him peaceful and ultra-intelligent."

"It what?"

"It's supposed to affect one's DNA. It made me sick. Gave me the headache."

Sean's lips worked; his deep-set eyes glared; his mug spilled coffee. "Than what happened? Do the men know? That it made you sick?"

"No."

"In the name of everything holy why didn't you tell them?"

She shrugged, emptied the spoonful of beans, chewed. "Lots of reasons, but I'm thinking about it. The thing is, the actual results are mixed. The good-guy chemist, Dr.-Manyblades, that’s right, says some of the offspring of the test animals are violent."

"Violent?"

"He didn’t know what percentage."

"Genetically violent offspring, with extra intelligence?" Sean thought. "And how great a dose did you get?"

"Not much; I just inhaled some fumes. Most of them were gone before they reached me."

"I see."

He set down his wet mug and leaned back, but urgency trembled along his fingers. The dashed lights had returned, and some of the stench.

"You seem disturbed," Naomi said.

"Indeed I am. Do you realize that the use of this chemical in warfare‒as a spray over populations, or even rivers and fields, I mean‒might be capable in a couple of generations of changing the human race? The very concept of it is an outrage."

"You a Catholic?" she asked, sardonic.

"Well obviously, acushla." He smiled for a moment, but continued to look grim. "And even if I weren't, I should protest such an outrage against nature‒and especially placing it at the disposal of your American generals."

"Going to be around for a few days?"

"Just."

"Let me have your phone number. I have some telephoning to do, but you may prove to be an ally when I need one."

He dictated as she reached for a napkin and pulled out her pencil. He included the number at his Irish home.

Four

At four-thirty that afternoon Naomi waited for the 55 Sacramento bus under a jeweler's marquee at Fifth and Market. Christmas shoppers waited to jam the bus with her. She didn't mind, considering the alternative was an uphill walk to Bush Street through a miserable drizzle. It was dusk. J.C. Penny's tinseled windows threw yellow lights across Fifth Street, and the Salvation Army Santa flopped a bell and droned ho-ho-ho. Across Market, a man played alto sax in front of Woolworth's. Street crazies stood around him clapping and shuffling in time, Indian beads and fringes waving. They kept the shoppers away from the sax player's hat‒that and his yellowish, sharp-muzzled dog.

Manyblades.

Naomi felt a touch on her arm but ignored it, angrily denying her continued prescience. She watched the sax player shove bills into the neck of his shirt.

"... a cup of coffee? I'd like to talk with you about that interview with Dr. Bayer. I didn't know how to get in touch with you, so I followed you from the paper."

She turned to face him. The Chronicle building was just a block away; maybe she'd seen him from the corner of her eye. And the interior voices were silent...

"No."

"Please." He studied the air midway between their bellies. "It's not exactly business, but it's not social. It may be important." His wide-set eyes glanced to hers, then away.

"You're a reservation Navajo, aren't you?"

He was surprised. "How did you know?"

"You still avoid eye contact. You're too tall for a Hopi, and not fat enough to be any of the Pais. I'm from Prescott."

She had caught him off-stride. Now, disgusted with her day and this diffident man who had helped cause it, she kept the initiative. "Listen: the air in your lab made me so sick that I can still smell it, so I called some of your graduate slaves. They are fascinated by the similarity of my sickness to theirs. We're talking about a suit, you understand? A class-action suit against you, Bayer, and UC Berkeley. So I won't talk with you about yesterday."

"I could give you some information." He waited a beat for her answer. She withheld it. "You'd rather take chances."

"Yes."

Now his glance locked onto hers. "Whom did you talk to about Peakspore?"

A dangerous eagerness, as if to please or appease, communicated itself with that look. Her bus drove up; shoppers shoved past them. Manyblades was shifted sideways, forced so near to her that she smelled him; the sweetish lab stench, but also sunshine on hanging laundry, junipers. Home. It broke Naomi's quasi-trance.

Dustin said, "I have knowledge you need. Call it ammunition, if you like. Or call this an interview with the other Nobel laureate-to-be." The corners of his mouth turned down. She remembered his scornful "...get things done" over the precocious pig.

"All right."

They walked up Powell to a cafeteria and took coffee to the mezzanine, climbing black-carpeted steps between chromed art-deco banisters. Black walls, black mirrors, low ceiling. Naomi's reflected face floated between chrome-shaded spotlights, a dozen pale ghosts in penumbra. Manyblades chose a table at the back where not even the window wall at the front of the building was visible. They were alone.

He was formal. "Miss Bessemer, it's unfortunate, but yesterday you became Peakspore's first viable human subject. Dr. Bayer asked me to tell you."

"I beg your pardon?"

"The first human to ingest Peakspore. Remember? The excipient. You were tagged 'it' when you broke that ampoule."

This wasn't making sense. "First viable? And excipient? A binder to other compounds? Of what compounds?"

"He asked me to find you and tell you."

Manyblades wrapped both elegant hands around his mug, his wrists at the edge of the round table. He sat very straight, looked very solemn. Under his expensive tweed jacket he wore a blue work shirt with a silver bola.

He went on, "The idea is to watch your responses, taking special note of those of your autonomic system. To test. You. Yes, we see it as an excipient."

"Excipient for what? He didn't say anything about that."

Manyblades' speech continued, so structured it might have been learned by rote. "So far, most of the lab animals don't react grossly; you'll remember they're supposed to be cooperative, but in fact many of the second-generation newborn are not. In any event, it may be too soon for full reaction by the infant lambs and pigs, they're bigger than the rodents and won't yet show all of the effects. Or side-effects, I should say. Since you're human, you may take many months, perhaps years. We need to request..."

"What are you saying?"

Manyblades's speech rewound. "You broke an ampoule of Peakspore at the laboratory. The material that Dr. Bayer was telling you about. The control material. It went into the sink beneath the high shelf where I put it for safekeeping. That means when you tipped it down, it broke and its fumes went into your face. I thought I heard you do it, and Dr. Bayer found the broken glass in the waste basket. You probably ingested enough, just by breathing it in, to trank a good-sized dog. We can't predict which result to expect in offspring from any exposure to the parent; tranquillization or‒well, a disposition to violence. I said it's unpredictable. Bayer asked me to find you and let you know."

She snorted with disbelief. She forgot Manyblades's distracting, sober elegance and stared into the half-dark beside his head. Peakspore; she was affected by the stuff, no surprise; but...

"Violence in my offspring?"

"And about a quarter of the time in the subjects themselves. In the offspring, about half. Un-Mendelian, that, but there you are."

Which accounted for her shouting at the Mayor after all, or really. All day her bitter intolerance had come and gone, interrupted by unwonted charity, peace, and this sense of‒this sixth sense of‒like feeling the science editor's jealousy of her independence, like hearing thoughts, like not liking that Irishman very much after all. Like knowing Manyblades was behind her on the street.

Naomi felt revulsion take over her face. Animals were treated with this stuff, their appetites and excreta and sexual behavior were observed and written up, their organs weighed and measured when they died. Or were euthanized. She looked from Dustin Manyblades to the glossy plastic orchid between them. She wanted to spit.

Manyblades finished his speech. "Dr. Bayer and I would like very much to be able to monitor the material through your system, if it's not too late, and observe your responses. The Pentagon is interested, as well." His speech delivered, he relaxed his hold on the mug and spoke spontaneously. "That's ugly, but I don't know how else to put it. Of course, the Pentagon will provide the best medical attention. At no cost."

The incautious animal in her had returned. A puff of warm air blew hair across her mouth and she heard the keening she had fought from that cottonwood.

Only there was not a single, solitary cottonwood anywhere near that angle of the Berkeley campus, any more than there was a breeze or a coyote in this cafeteria.

The realization froze her. Manyblade's face became extra-distinct, his incipient beard clear beneath his skin. And her long hair was lifted across her chin and lips, that was undeniable, and it tickled.

"Does your hair usually writhe like that? Like Medusa's?"

She flicked it off with a finger.

Too much.

And she could hear him thinking.

"Too much what?"

His fascinated gaze shifted from her hair. His sparse eyebrows lifted.

"What will I always be too much of?" Naomi demanded. "Or is it do? Overreact?" He did not answer. Her voice quavering with fury, she went on. "I'll tell you this much, Dr. Manyblades. Your half-baked formula is an unmitigated failure as a peacemaker, but boy does it do some far-out things to your head! But you know that already, don't you? Because I'm not really the first; you and that ass Bayer are, and you're too involved in your voodoo thinking, in your lying and half-truths about the great revolutionary weapon for peace, to even acknowledge it."

His prim attitude slipped again, and again it reassembled. "Not lies, predictions, Miss Bessemer. Our test results point to future..."

"Because I not only inhaled that trash, I smelled it. I smelled it from the time I entered your lab, then the smell was stronger when Bayer brought me that grotesque rat. It's in the animals' breath and released through the pores of their skin and comes out in their feces, and it stinks. And then I smelled it undiluted, when it evaporated in my face. You have been working in it and breathing its fumes for what, two years? Five years for Bayer? Six? Longer than that giant rat's been alive, anyhow, and you haven’t taken even the most elementary precautions, like wearing a mask and gloves when you handle those animals. By now you're both crazier than I am." She amazed herself by adding, "I'm going to see to it that you can't use it, or develop it as an excipient, or deliver it to the Pentagon for them to spray all over those guys in southeast Asia."

"Peakspore cannot escape our hermetic seals unless the container is broken, Miss Bessemer. And how do you know its effect? What are your symptoms?"

If she answered she would hit him. Instead she asked, "Have you ever smelled a coyote?" Manyblades blinked. "What does it smell like? How near do you have to be?"

He snorted and became jocular. "Of course I grew up with coyotes on the rez. My mother calls them tricksters. Mostly I've smelled sheep, lots of sheep. Mean little buggers," he joshed, "they have a good rep with their long hair and cute curly horns. No one talks about their sharp little teeth though, or the way they sneak up on you when you're not looking, see that scar?" He pulled his jeans up one leg, his eyes big and sincere, his skinny forefinger pointing. Naomi smiled because she wanted to cry, and he lowered his pant leg. "But no, I've never smelled a coyote. They don't let you get that close. What are you on, lady?" His face went from being bright-disingenuous to paranoid-suspicious, still clowning.

"Have you ever seen a coyote on campus?"

"No. But that doesn't mean anything, they're all over those hills. Come down at night to eat cats in the neighborhood. And the garbage. Do you know you have a nice smile?"

"You guys go ahead and volunteer for your own tests. I won't become an experimental animal for E. James Bayer. Not for him, or you, not for UC Berkeley, and no way for the paranoid, murderous generals at the Pentagon."

Manyblades resumed formality. "You need to think this through," he began, and continued his pitch about medical care until she stalked out.

Five

She continued to seethe when she reached home. She meant her threat to keep Peakspore from the Pentagon. Not that she knew how she would do it, or even how to begin, but she would. She knew important people; she was a nationally respected science writer; there were moral issues; her cause was just; others, the right sort of persons, would share her high resolve.

High resolve? Had she really used that phrase?

Yes she had, and...

She leaned against the kitchen sink and mused while her lamb chop charred and her carrots caramelized.

Well, she’d do something. Whatever she could. After all, just because the weapon (Excipient? Really?) was available, that didn’t mean it would be used. Look at mustard gas; they didn’t use that, did they? And anyway, there were limits even for the stupid hawks in Washington.

But all those horrible diseases kept in Atlanta; cholera, plague...

Although come to think of it, why kept? Why not destroyed? The stuff was adequately described in the literature. Great-uncle Les was gassed during World War I and he woke up screaming for years. Back in the Dark Ages, plague killed one European in ten, horribly. And was now stored, kept, preserved, protected, by the taxpayers' government.

And here was Peakspore, a gas that made violent babies. Via the mother's DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid. That someday, maybe soon if sprayed over southeast Asia, could change the whole, entire human race forever and make it increasingly violent with each generation. Stuff that could be solidified, and bind together, addictive drugs. Put into water supplies.

The doorbell rang. "Naomi, it's Clive," she heard. The manager. She liked him and wanted to know him better.

"Come on in," she called back, and rescued the carrots. "Just cooking."

He appeared, blond, soignée and tolerant as he sniffed the smoky air. "Honey, when it comes to you and cooking, perhaps a little less would be more?"

She grinned and opened the window. "I was distracted. What's up?"

"Just thought you'd appreciate knowing they finally sent over the man for your personal red-light district. I mean the warm-up light in your bathroom, of course."

"Good. I hate having an electric heater in there when I bathe. I'm afraid I'll bump it."

"Wouldn’t be a good thing," he agreed.

"So I'll be comfy in the tub tonight?"

"Not quite. The man said he found a glitch in the connection, so he tripped off for some parts or wires or something. He'll bring them back in the morning to reinstall the whole thing. Will you be here? Maybe you should, just to make sure. You know. I stayed with him this afternoon for as long as he was here, but I can't do that again."

"You don't trust him?"

"Of course I trust him, but you can never be too sure, can you? Besides, he's too butch for my taste."

"Quite. I'll stay home."

Clive left. Naomi connected things: Dustin Manyblades; Pentagon enquiry; immediate electrical work in her home. Surveillance. She turned off the stove and found Sean Colum’s phone number at his hotel.

Six

The next night Naomi and Sean found Bayer's house in Berkeley. The house had a lit oriel window with an aspidistra. Flying, Naomi presumed by the run-down look of the neighborhood. They drove by, then Sean, harsh and driven, slowed to let her out.

Once on the street, Naomi checked the man's Timex watch she wore; she had twenty minutes. She moved up a steep hill squinting against a streetlight, turned left and downhill past sycamores that smelled like streambeds. Left again into Bayer's unpaved back alley.

The alley was unlit and the tall gate into Bayer's back yard was unlocked; it was easy. Nonetheless, her resolve slackened with every loud heartbeat. Her hair was bleached and crew-cut. She wore tan slacks, a blue oxford-cloth shirt with a maroon silk knit tie. The shirt pocket over the slope of her breast was filled with a row of ball-point pens in a plastic holder. She might pass for an engineering student; she prayed she would.

Bayer's basement dug under his first floor from lower down the hill. Above its door was a window with the silhouette of a fat woman's head and shoulders. The woman watched her hands and talked to someone; she must be washing dishes. The other head appeared in passing: Bayer. Time to do it.

Naomi held her breath and listened to her heart. Reminded herself she was mad, that this was worthwhile work. She ducked along shadows where the kitchen light dissolved. At the basement door she slipped Sean's knife blade into the jamb. It screeched, then stuck. She pushed hard and tried the knob. The door wasn't locked. She closed the knife and shoved it into her pants pocket. Remembered her rubber gloves and put them on. Entered the basement. Her teeth were clenched so hard her jaw hurt.

Light filtered into the basement from an open door above wood stairs. There were wine racks, a bicycle, the smelly garbage pails she almost kicked. Footsteps crisscrossed overhead. Her nerves jumped. Bayer's voice lisped and murmured. The woman answered from another part of the house. Their thoughts whined and bickered. The light went out. Naomi was alone with her penlight, her silly rubber gloves, and terrific, unwonted fear.

She had half-expected Peakspore to affect her this way sometime, but this feeling was strong, stronger than she could have guessed; more like terror. But she climbed the stair, slipped trembling along a hallway and started at a shadowy cat, got lost in a cul-de-sac and entered a nursery.

An angel slept there. Straight blond hair feathered across his forehead. A pudgy fist lay against his cheek. His room smelled of wet diapers and sour milk with baby powder. And Bayer's Peakspore-impregnated lab. Naomi gagged; she would give up, just run away.

She found the Bayers’ bedroom as she fled, though. It was just beyond the kitchen.

In the front of the house, the Bayers quarreled over canned televised laughter. Naomi snapped on her penlight and surveyed the bedroom. Scandinavian-style bed in ash. Matching chest and desk. Rya rug beside the bed in browns. White curtains, white spread. No pictures. Sterile. Except for the pervasive sweetish smell, it was a cell for ascetics.

She moved to the desk at the end of the bed and pulled a pocket address book from a pile of keys and change. Then into the closet just in case, and because she was so frightened by now that she was beginning to cry. She squatted among the skirts and shirts with the door closed, fighting claustrophobia. She ignored the lumpy discomfort of the shoes beneath her hams, lit the pages of the book and started copying: Washington, DC; Winslow, Arizona; Los Angeles; San Francisco. She forgot the time.

A bell shrieked. She yelped even as she realized it was only the doorbell mounted behind her on the other side of the wall. But footsteps soon approached. Rising, she jammed the papers and address book behind the plastic penholder and doused her light. She stuffed the rubber gloves into her panties. She strained to hear.

It was two pairs of footsteps. Two urgent voices whispered behind the wall, then circled it and were just beyond her door, inside the bedroom. Light licked the toes of her moccasins.

"No he isn't the police," the woman's voice whispered. "I'm telling you, he's one of those commie queers who stole your recipe!"

Stole the recipe? For Peakspore?

Bayer was aggrieved. "He isn't! He wouldn't be heaw to wahn, er, warn us that he saw her hanging around. I'm going to call my people on campus."

"Call the city police too! What if I'm right?"

There was a clink as if from the change on the desk, then Bayer's voice again. "Funny, it's not‒I must have left the number in my‒no. Maybe my jacket."

"What if he's just a diversion so she can get in here? Your precious protection won't do..."

Bayer cut her off. "If you're so sure he's that woman's friend, go keep him busy! My people will talk to him when they get here. I'll be wight in."

Heavy, retreating footsteps. Then the closet door opened and Naomi's hesitant fist hit Bayer's Adam's apple. It wasn't half enough. Bayer clutched her to his little barrel chest, coughing and swearing. She kicked and tried to shove. She was thrown onto her belly, skidding across the parquet floor to the rya. It stank like goats. "Jesus!" she yelled in her own voice.

"Kwist!" Bayer finished, and was on her, yelling and pummeling at the arms she scissored over her head.

Then Peakspore kicked in and she was furious, animal, and mighty. At the same time, she sensed Bayer’s unvoiced, frantic thought and realized that, sprawled across her legs and back, he was getting off. Not leaving, getting off. Sexually. On her fanny. It might have been funny except that his blows hurt her arms.

He was off in fact, lifted, before she could use the new strength she felt invade her arms and legs. She paid no attention as rough hands pinned her from behind. She glared at red-faced, panting Bayer and at his fat wife. She wondered whether she really would have hurt them.

She eased her shoulders so she could jerk free. The hands tightened on her wrists. "Son of a bitch!" she rasped, trying to sound mannish.

"A belt! Or a tie. Don't try anything, kiddo!" The voice was calm. And oh thank God, Sean's.

Bayer's wife reached for the belt to her overstuffed slacks, but Bayer was quicker with a fistful of skinny ties from the closet. Sean tied her hands and elbows behind her, jerking a lot.

"Breaking and entering with everyone home; right stupid little brute. What are you on? Speed? Ludes? Lucky I saw you sneak in from the alley." He came around to face Naomi, crossing his arms over his chest. He wore no hat, but what he had done with false hair on eyebrows and upper lip was enough; she wouldn't have recognized him. He sighed. "And I was just going home, too." His exaggerated brogue was delicious. His broad face was disapproving, fatigued, bored. He wore the uniform of the campus police and a big black holster.

"Goddamned stupid pig! Where's your fuckin' cuffs, anyhow? You're not even a regular cop!" She kicked at him and missed as he dodged. Bayer retreated to the doorway. His meaty wife backed into the hall.

"Out of the house, big man; those ties will hold you till we get to the car. You'd best say nothing, you know. Anything you say..."

"Can it, mick! I know my fucking rights! Take me to a phone!" Naomi hunched to hide the minute swell of her breasts against her shirt.

"Not just yet, boy-o." Sean turned to Beyer. "Take a look around. See if he got anything."

Bayer cast a quick eye toward the closet where Naomi had been. "Fwisk him. It doesn't wook like he has anything in his pockets, though."

Sean did a thorough job, turning up the knife, patting the flimsy gloves into flatness against her belly, squashing the address book against her chest while she squawked, and probing deep into her underarms and along her crotch. Bayer watched with moistened lips. His wife averted her eyes when Sean shoved Naomi double and, with insulting deliberation, felt between her buttocks, down her inner thighs and back up again.

"That's all, then," he announced. "I'll take him in. An officer will come by tomorrow morning to take your statement."

Bayer's wife hitched at her belt. "Fine. You've been a great help."

"I must wepoat this to the OSS, officow. Officer. This is not the first trouble I have had..."

Sean looked at Bayer more closely, reacted, and grew chummy. "Oh. I recognize you now, Doctor Beyer. I see you on my rounds across the north campus. You've had your troubles, haven't you? The Peaceniks demonstrating against you..." He eyed Naomi malevolently. "At a guess, this creature thought he'd get your chemicals and sell them as drugs." He gave an upward yank to Naomi's bound wrists. She winced and yawped.

Bayer snorted. "Or ransom them, maybe. A lot of good they'd have done him."

"I'm going to trash the recipes, egghead!" Naomi snarled. "The redskin probably has another copy..."

"You see, Jim?" shrilled the woman. "I warned you the communists are on campus!"

Naomi sneered and snapped all the way out to the car. Bayer and his red-baiting wife followed as far as the porch, watching as Sean ostentatiously retrieved a pair of handcuffs from the glove compartment and cuffed Naomi's wrists before her. He used the ties to secure her ankles to the braces of the front seat. Bayer, his arms crossed, was clearly pleased with himself.

"Hey pwofessow!" Naomi sneered as Sean tugged at the knots. "I'll get yoah notes!" Bayer stiffened. "I'll be back, animal-lovuh!"

Sean slammed the car door and got the engine started as Bayer stormed down the walk. They scooted off without looking back.

Naomi fumed. "Someone beat us to it!"

"There'll be right hell to pay for that, too," Sean said. He turned onto Hearst. "Federal agencies, people from your Center for Disease Control, not to mention the local police. Berkeley will be crawling."

"It already is. Even the CIA has a Domestic Operations Division in San Francisco. Supposed to be a secret." Naomi squirmed as they approached the service entrance to the campus. "But we have to find out who took that formula. And we still have to get rid of the chemical."

"Very carefully, luv."

"Yes." She squirmed again. "When are you going to untie me?"

"I hoped you were into bondage."

She stopped jerking against the knots at her ankles and grinned, uneasy. "Pwomises, pwomises."

Seven

Entering Bayer's lab was easy; the janitor got one look at Sean's uniform and his flashed credentials, listened to words like "Pentagon" and "surveillance," and let them in. Sean flipped on the lights; the black tables popped into view against the glare. The janitor left with a salute of his forefinger.

Excited squeals rose from the alcove as Naomi headed toward it. The cages were stacked against the walls, wire cubes atop sliding trays that collected droppings. Each stack was separated from its neighbor by a couple of inches of space. The small animals were in the top tier; big mice on their hind feet, scratching and gnawing at the screen. Below them were bloated rats, gerbils, guinea pigs, then rabbits at floor level the size of spaniels, all at their screen walls, all too big, all clawing, reaching into the space between piles of cages as if trying to hurt something.

"Not happy to see us," Sean observed. "Maybe they're hungry."

A stride ahead of him, Naomi opened the heavy door beside the cages. Din struck her, a wall of panicky, screeching fury. She found the light switch. Large, battered pens with solid walls and barred fronts stretched back-to-back right down the center of a long room. Heavy chrome fittings locked the screened roofs into place. Piglets and sheep butted and kicked at the walls.

"Jesus, Joseph and Mary!" Sean breathed, "The place must be soundproofed!" Then, "Look at that lamb!"

The bony front of a lamb's head was bandaged, but wet blood glistened through the dressing. Its hoofs scrabbled for purchase on the sheet-metal floor. Again and again it butted a stanchion in its cage. Beside it, an identical lamb butted with the same demented force.

"They're crazy!" Sean said.

"Do they respond to light?" Naomi wondered. There were no voices with words, but the emotions were there, just as expressive. "It's the pens!" she realized. "They can't take confinement!"

"No shit."

Naomi stooped beside him to see into the injured lamb's cage. Ignoring or not aware of its pain, it leapt and butted, leapt and butted. "The mammals're like the rodents, then."

"What in bloody hell goes on in this place?" Sean asked. "It's that formula! That Bayer fellow and his friend feed the chemical to them! What are they trying to prove?"

"Bayer said it would make the enemy see reason, and cooperate; make people peaceful. But it makes their offspring‒like this." She pulled her eyes from the lamb. The familiar stench was strong enough to lift hackles at the back of her neck. She rose. "I can't do this. I'm going."

"No!" Sean grabbed her wrist and stood, holding tight and looking at her hard. "We must get rid of that stuff. If the Pentagon intends to spray it on people, we must destroy it." He pulled her to the back side of the pens. The (stolen?) gun in his holster seemed too big.

She didn't want to help him; she wanted to run, to pretend this place didn't exist and to hell with her exalted Duty. She wanted to lie in a warm bed with a pretty love story and soothing music and a mug of cocoa. But rationally she wouldn't get a chance like this again. It was a big story, a Pulitzer-sized story, especially now that someone had taken the formula and cheated the Pentagon. And Peakspore was certainly evil.

She nodded. "You’re right." He released her. "Where is the chemical? The only supply I know about is in that first room. Look in that cabinet by the door, I’ll take the one behind that pig."

"It won’t be anywhere unlocked such as those; and it will be kept in dark containers. It will be in a chest, perhaps in a closet with a combination lock." He veered absently down the line of cages and stooped for a better look. "Come, Naomi. Look at this."

A beautiful ewe stood penned at the far end of the room. Tranquil, stock-still, it gazed at them with yellow eyes. Made eye contact. Projected peace and love. "Baa," it said.

Naomi moved to the adjacent pen. A pony-sized, pink-and-white sow raised its head for a friendly look at its visitors. Naomi hunkered onto her heels. The pig’s dugs were swollen; it was a new mother. It sidled up to her and presented its haunch. Naomi obliged it with a heavy scratch through the bars. "These guys are all right," she said. "What's the difference? That they're grown up? Matured?"

Sean was reading the tags that hung from the stanchions. He returned to the rabid lamb and stooped to read. He checked another pen. "Apparently so," he said. "These angry boys were born in the past week and have had no shots of Peakspore at all. And that friendly ewe is..." He moved to its tag. "...three years old, treated twice in '62. The sow is..." another tag, "...the same age, same treatment." He grunted and straightened. "I mean, to make animals like that, or that demented..." He shook his head. Naomi didn't comment. "Your doctors are diddling mother nature."

At the end of the room they found a padlocked cupboard inside a padlocked closet, as Sean had predicted. Smirking, he unscrewed the hinges with the screwdriver on his pocketknife; the cabinet doors swung open. Labeled jugs and jars of clear liquid sat on wood shelves. Peakspore looked as innocent as water or grain alcohol. A cardboard-backed log hung from a clip on a nail. Naomi took it. At first Sean read over her shoulder, but then turned to hefting the jugs to the floor.

The log was graphed sheets stapled together half an inch thick and dated backward from the present. Their margins were speckled with hand-drawn molecular structures like chicken wire. Modifications to the original formula were noted. Comments were scrawled: "Novel!" "Intriguing!" Something-something "...series of analogs that promise..."

Naomi could follow most of the arguments there, but would wait to read them at home. She unclipped the pages from the cover and stuffed them into the front of her shirt.

That's when the hall door banged open. The animals' din redoubled. Dozens of loosened bowels and bladders squirted. "Bayer!" Naomi hissed, because she knew. "He brought someone with him!"

"Merde!" Sean’s right hand shoved her to the floor as his left reached for his holster. He was gone.

"Far enough!" she heard, then "Move over there!"

Hot wind slid down the back of her shirt. A man’s keening cry rang silent in her head.

"Naomi!"

She peered through a wire cage in the alcove. Sean faced the far corner of the lab, one rigid arm pointing the pistol.

"Naomi!"

She sidled into the light. Bayer and the trusting janitor, both pasty-faced, stood between the far wall and the row of sinks. She joined Sean.

"Helen was right!" Bayer squealed. "You devious bitch!"

"Squat!" Sean barked. "On your haunches!" The men dipped and Sean moved to keep them in sight. The janitor's eyes darted like gnats.

"I'm going to dump that chemical," Naomi said.

"No! You wouldn't dayuh!" from Bayer.

Sean said, "He’s right. You don't want to release it into the air."

"Right. We'll take it."

"No!" Bayer made as if to stand, but remembered Sean's gun.

"Look for some surgeons' masks; they're bound to be here. Then search for rubber tubing and clamps. The tubing will be wound on a spool."

"I know."

As she moved toward the alcove Sean added, "Look for cartons to carry the chemical. We'll pad the containers with those lab coats on the racks."

The animals became watchful while she searched; their noise lessened. She found shelves of glass paraphernalia, square cans with handles across the top, spools of tubing in several diameters. She set a spool on the counter beside Sean. With the ugly pistol still aimed, he unwound tubing with his free hand.

"Take the knife from my pocket and cut pieces this long."

"Right or left pocket?"

"Right."

She groped and found the knife nestled in the dip of his groin, next to what was obviously an erection.

"My god, wheuh did you get a gun like that?" Bayer's voice was respectful.

"Squat."

"You pwan to tie us up with that?"

"Now find hydrochloric acid, Naomi. And a funnel small enough to fit into this tubing."

"Oh, god!" The bug-eyed janitor had found words.

"Right. I shall tie you so tightly that if you so much as cry out, ladd-o, the hose will rupture at your throat."

That’s when Naomi lost her compassion and gained utter indifference for the two captive men, for Sean the idealistic guerilla with a gun, for even herself. It no longer mattered whether anyone were hurt here; whether she and Sean were caught; whether Peakspore were destroyed. The task at hand was clear-cut and simple and the only important thing in the writhing, hissing world. She filled the tubes with acid and double-clamped the ends. Her voice was calm, her hands were steady. "Will these clamps hold?"

"If these men are very still. Are you willing to shoot one of them at need?"

She took the long-barreled gun. "Yes."

"If either of them moves, shoot off his nuts."

"Okay."

"Just pull the trigger."

"Okay."

"You can get sick afterward."

She glanced up, gripping the pistol butt with both hands. Strings of dashed light joined him, his prisoners, the cages across the room.

"Fine with me if I shoot," she said.

She had never seen Sean smile beyond the crinkle at corners of his eyes. Now he hog-tied the men with an unconscious grin. He whistled; he wound the acid-filled hose around the janitor’s ankles, then up his back and neck, then to the wrists behind the jibbering man’s back. As he wound it round Bayer’s wrists he said, "Right scared now, aren’t you, Doctor? Frightens you, doesn’t it?" He chuckled. "You’d best hope this clamp is sound."

Bayer risked a remark, holding perfectly still and so furious he stared. "I shall see that you two ahr twied, convicted and executed foah tweason."

From the other room an eerie, shrill cry began, warbled high, and stopped. Another took up where the first ended. Another began. Sean's command exactly, eerily echoed Naomi's rasped voice at Bayer's front porch: "Can it, animow-lovuh."

Eight

They fled the building pursued by increasing din. The boxes they carried were awkward; their cargo jounced and clinked. Once they saw a security patrol and crouched behind a hedge for endless minutes, afraid to breathe as the men poked a door with their flashlights and passed. Naomi had seen enough of Sean. She would have done anything to speed the dangerous task and end it, to be shut of him. Have a good meal, a night’s sleep. But the fresh air helped; she gradually lost that chilly indifference which watched the janitor suffer until he cried.

At length they left the campus undetected, and their plan resumed. They had swapped cars with a friend of Sean's. With cartons of Peakspore tinkling on the rear seat he stopped at a corner and left the motor running. "Call the police from that pay phone," he told her. "Tell them where to find Bayer and the janitor. And tell them what's in the tubing."

"Right. Did you really get that gun from the IRA?"

"I did."

"Ever blow the head off a statue with dynamite?"

Sean was digging into his pocket for a dime. "I prefer Iremite 60."

"Where do you buy Iremite 60? In case. I might find more of this stuff after you're gone."

"I'll give you the supplier's address. This monstrous shit has to go."

***

They drove east into the hills, then north along dirt roads. Hefted the boxes, beginning to climb on foot. Naomi by now was inured to Sean’s tense craziness and the lights flashing from his head. The foggy, moonless night felt like wool and smelled of sage. Flinty stones skidded under their shoes. Not even the spill of city lights could help them see, and they were too cautious to use flashlights so near a residential district.

Sean stumbled onto what they wanted. "Ah, yes!"

Naomi fetched up against him with her box. "What?"

"A dump!"

She could see nothing. "What?"

"A ravine filled with refuse. We're there."

She just made out a long, long mound of pale trash descending almost from her feet. "Lordy," she muttered.

It took all night. They scrambled over treacherous, rotting mattresses, tires, and tins; found appropriate big containers in the trash, then smaller ones, packed the jugs in dirt in the small boxes, then those into bigger boxes with more dirt which Naomi dug with tin cans. Little animals squeaked, roaches swarmed, Naomi swore, Sean chuckled. Once a snake slithered across her shoe. The strings of light connecting Sean's head to everything else disappeared near midnight.

As false dawn came, Sean had burrowed deep into the pile, grunting and shoving things until he reached solid, rocky ground.

"Damn! We'll never in this world dig into this rock." He was so deep in trash that not even his head cleared it.

Naomi sighed and straightened atop the messy piles. "That’s all right."

"It would be better."

"But this will be good enough. If we bury it in soil, it will get into the groundwater at once. This way it'll most likely degrade before it does any harm."

He shoved at a tire by her foot and grunted. "Perhaps that's so."

"It had better be; we've run out of time." She handed him a dirt-packed lard can filled with a mayonnaise jar that contained a single ampule.

He continued to fret. "It would be better to dig another hole into this trash and disperse it further."

"It would be better to have a good bath and some tincture of merthiolate for our cuts."

He lifted the inside lip of the tire and shoved the can into the cavity. His pale grin glowed from the pit, meaningless except for the sadism she had learned was there. "Damn, woman! You don't want bondage, and now you're whining at grunge! Just what kinks do you have?" His words were bantering; his tone was not.

Visions bloomed into Naomi's head from his: Bayer, splayed naked on a rack; Manyblades, bound into an Iron Maiden as it closed; Bayer, wearing a boot... As she handed him a box their hands touched again. She felt a shock of revulsion that was not her own, and the origin of the sadistic visions was explained. Time hesitated.

"Peace?" she answered, "Love and Marriage?"

"You're depraved."

"And you."

It was a gray dawn. With the huge trash pile restored to its natural contour and the bleached and rotting cardboards returned to its top, they headed back and locked themselves into the borrowed car. They stared through the windshield.

"Got a flask?" Naomi asked.

"Glove compartment."

"Why do you hate that stuff so much?"

He waited a beat to answer. When he did, it was such a simple statement that she believed it. "Because I know evil to be a fact. And I hate it with my entire life. That compound is an evil thing."

Then they emptied the flask without talking and headed onto Shattuck, grateful for streetlights and sidewalks and early traffic. When they reached the mud flats by the Oakland Bay Bridge Naomi sought the driftwood dragon silhouetted against the gray light on the bay.

Nine

That day, Friday, there were already big headlines about missing government secrets. Naomi’s name and picture (still with long black hair) were everywhere, associated with the guerillas of the Irish Republican Army. There were no photos of Sean.

All day she alternated between fear and fury. She fidgeted along Polk Street; it would be dangerous to go home, only three blocks away.

The Chronicle parking lot was full of shadows by sunset. Editor Jonson had once taken her home in the rain, then fumbled at her breast when she opened the car door to leave. Nearly mashed his fingers when she slammed it. Now, crouching and running below the sight-line to the building’s exit, she found his unlocked Plymouth. Its interior stank of ashtray. When he entered, she rose from the back. "Be quiet," she said, and climbed into the passenger seat.

He jerked, but sat still. "What in hell?"

It was full dark and beginning to rain. Light from a tall standard pecked at the space between vehicles. Another bulb, caged over the door to the building, lit the doorknob and a semicircle of pavement.

"It’s me. Bessemer."

He squinted. "So it is. Jesus! I thought you were a mugger."

She turned to face him square-on. "You want an exclusive from me, Jonson. And I want cash for it."

He studied her crew-cut hair and oxford-cloth shirt. "Do I?" He pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket but couldn’t disguise the tremor in his fingers. He punched the cigarette lighter on the dash.

"Don’t be coy; so does The Examiner. They'd love it."

Silence. The lighter popped out, glowed as he lit up, then disappeared. "How much?"

"A thousand dollars."

"You don’t earn that much in a month."

She leaned against the door and crossed her arms, waiting. He let cigarette smoke dribble from his nose; he sniffed it back in. Cannabis sativa and tobacco; the fore end of the cigarette was packed with pot. She waited some more.

"I can’t get that much money in cash."

"Try."

"Bessemer, I can’t."

She reached behind herself and opened the door. "I look forward to seeing the exclusive interview in The Examiner, Jonson." She got out.

"No! Get back in. I’ll think of something."

She got back in. He promised her the money.

***

That night got real bad. Her horror at Sean and the crazy animals abated, but she couldn't sleep because she stayed at the YWCA to avoid arrest. Women on other cots snored, moaned, or scratched. Tented with her little flashlight, claustrophobic and furious, she wrote another exposé of Peakspore, this time for The Realist. It was full of purple prose which she acknowledged and kept in anyway.

Around midnight she realized that Manyblades knew something she didn't. She almost knew what it was. She flicked off her failing light, shoved it and her story into her attaché case, and lay back down. "Too much what?" she again asked the high ceiling, because he had thought it although his lips hadn't moved.

Saturday morning the drizzle remained. She called one of the grad students from a pay phone, but he wouldn't talk to her. Neither would the next one. Sean didn’t answer his hotel phone, though he had promised her the use of his room at need. Her answering service reported two calls from Bayer, both conciliatory, and one from Manyblades. Manyblades left no message. Bayer wanted to talk, for her to visit and at least listen to his side of the story, maybe look at a little paper he wanted her to sign.

For "little paper," she realized, read "confession;" for "visit," "protracted prison sentence."

She made an appointment with her lawyer. She bought a bouffant wig at Woolworth's and shoved it onto her crew-cut in the store’s bathroom, then bought a rayon miniskirt printed with flowers and put that on, too. She waited in line for two hours at the free clinic in the Haight district and got a complete physical. She told the doctor she'd just cold-turkeyed a bunch of pills and wanted to know what to do next. He said she looked fine, but the test results would prove it in a couple of days.

After she removed the wig and resumed the man’s clothing she headed for the alley behind Jonson’s apartment, went into the trash-way and through the metal-clad door that led into the building. It clanged when she shut it. She found Jonson’s door up two flights of stairs and went onto the fire escape at the end of the hall. Sank onto her haunches beside a pair of potted geraniums to wait. She was hungry; she hoped he had the money. That he’d come alone.

He did. "Where in hell were you?" he demanded as she climbed into the hall. "I waited in that cafeteria for an hour."

"I assumed the worst, Jonson."

"You thought I’d bring the cops?"

"Didn’t you?"

He unlocked his door. "Come in."

"I don’t think so."

He paused. "Well, I’m tired. I’m going to go in there and have a drink. Did you see my feature?"

"To be honest, I didn’t bother to look. What did you write?"

He grinned. "I was flattering about your hair." Pause. "You coming in?"

"No. I don’t trust you. Just put the money on the floor, then go back down three of those stairs."

"Naomi..."

"Do it, if you want this interview. And put the money on the floor. Not an envelope."

His hand dipped into his overcoat. "I couldn’t get all of it. I had to take it out of my own pocket."

"Quelle dommage! How much did you get?"

"Five hundred."

"Liar. You got me eight hundred cash in less than an hour when I said the magic words ‘Pauling’ and ‘exclusive.’ Pull it all out of your mingey little pocket, boy, or I’ll leave. And I’m the biggest exclusive you’ll get this winter."

"How do I know you won’t just run off with it?"

She smiled and shrugged. He complied; he didn’t even make another protest.

He interviewed her from his doorway and recorded it on a bulky machine he brought from his apartment. She answered from the fire escape. She described her reaction to the much-diluted dose of Peakspore. She told him about the silence from Bayer and Manyblades when she realized someone else had been exposed to it too, probably to a full dose. She told him the whole miserable truth about the stuff, the violent offspring, the grotesque size of them, their passive and affectionate parents. She did not admit to burgling Bayer’s home, or taking the stuff, but she described the grisly interior room at the lab. Jonson, a good journalist, pointed like a bird dog when she mentioned another victim. He goggled at the tale of the suicidal lamb. He allowed that he had his money’s worth.

She snuck wigless and boyish again through the hospital next door to her home and onto the stairs in her trashway, watchful, needing clothes to wear. The voices in her head were overlapping and urgent.

In. Down the carpeted hall. Through her door.

She felt the couple in the next apartment bitch at each other as they left for their Saturday-night drunk. There was nothing else, no stranger's presence. She hadn't suspected that she could sleep so long, or so hard.

Monday: Still no answer from Sean. She tracked rain into the foyer of The Examiner to deliver another exposé and recognized the dark-suited back, the short hair, the sense of sanctimonious mission about a federal agent. He spoke her name to the receptionist. Naomi thought her resurgent fury must shriek. She ducked into an elevator recess and became fascinated by the vulnerable nape of his neck. She could imagine every curve of that bland, pale face.

The receptionist was cool: No, Miss Bessemer was not an employee, she was a free-lancer from whom The Examiner sometimes bought features. No, she could not give the man Miss Bessemer's address; however, she would be happy to write down Miss Bessemer’s business telephone number.

The elevator door opened. Naomi backed in and rode to the fifth floor, then back down to the lobby. The man was gone.

Her answering service had another message when she called, this time from a stranger. She did not respond.

Back to the YWCA, this time in a lot of makeup.

Tuesday. Her attorney's office left a message, and she called back from the lobby of the Mark Hopkins. Mr. Tippett had to be in Sacramento until Thursday, sorry, he couldn’t see her until then. She said that would be fine. She mailed in a free-clinic feature to The Chronicle and another Grateful-Dead-in-the-park blurb to the Associated Press.

At the health food store on Leavenworth she almost walked into another black-suit near a bushel basket of size-00 gelatin capsules. She backed and filled, lost him in the packed confines of a California Street cable car (Like, ugly-smelly-cramped fuckers, man. But hey, that's cool too, can you dig it?) and trudged, sour, back along Sutter, then Leavenworth, to her corner. A black-suit with an umbrella sat on the steps of her building.

But she was tired and the force of her anger was gone. She spent the rest of the day and a lot of the night in a movie house.

Ten

There aren’t a lot of places to hide in a city when you’re wanted. Naomi’s picture disappeared from television and the newspapers, but the damage had been done. A night on a friend’s couch would implicate the friend. A shelter would report her. She didn’t know any anti-government guerillas who might help. This affair was obviously not going to blow over, but she couldn’t leave town without more money. There was some at home, but she was afraid to go there again. She’d have called Clive, but was afraid that his phone would be tapped. Once she napped behind a billboard on the Broadway strip, and another time in the shrubbery of Saints Peter and Paul’s church in North Beach. Both times she was scared off by derelicts with the same idea. She followed a milkman and stole orange juice and cheese from his truck.

By now she was entirely frightened. She tried to plan. Prescott, her girlhood home? She’d be remembered even in a disguise. Not Phoenix, either. Portland? Klamath Falls? Chicago?

Wednesday. When she entered her apartment (from the hospital again, the move risky but essential for the money she kept there) a slip under her door asked her to call Dustin Manyblades at a new number.

And someone had been in the room before her. She smelled Old Spice, a sickly, insipid perfume she could not bear. It was all over her favorite chair.

Woozy with fright she stumbled to Clive's apartment on the first floor.

He answered the door wearing a brown printed hapi coat that just covered his buttocks. He was blond, crisp-featured and striking. "Yes?" Also grumpy and impatient, his palm on the door jamb with fingers tapping the pristine enamel. It was obvious to her he had come, if that weren't too nice a verb, from the bedroom. A bamboo cage of wrens filled the wall behind him, a fluttering nimbus.

"Clive, has anyone been here for me? Did anyone ask for me?"

Tap-tap-tap. "Naomi, what do you think? Every god-damned government agency and their shrink-headed agents, except for Social Services, has been asking about you. It’s been a living hell."

"Did they go into my place? Maybe you went in for a minute?"

"Obviously, dear. You can’t just break-and-enter the Pentagon’s pet project like that and expect the peaceful enjoyment, etc. of your home. I went in with them, of course. They took a lot of pictures, but they didn’t take much. Confiscate. The stuff in your desk." He examined her, then visibly decided not to offer more. "You must excuse me." Head twist to the left, responding to a call. "Excuse me." He shut the door.

Naomi spooked. Out out out get out get out leave run hide run out out out... Back to the fire stairs, their doorway hidden from the street by a bend in the hall. She descended, longing for righteous indignation, fury, anything but this awful sense of doom. By the time she was downstairs she panicked again and climbed back up lead-footed, her wig whipping dacron strands across her lips in the dead-still air.

Details magnified: white paint, peeling from the risers; slivers fraying along the leading edge of the steps; the hospital wall, near enough to touch. God. (Step) God damn. (Two steps) God damn bas tards.

Her eyes refocused long enough to see the half-lit street beyond the buildings, a slit that revealed a tight-faced man in a car parked across the street. She darted back inside at the next landing and returned to Clive's door.

"Coming! I'm coming! Christ!" The door opened on another flutter of wrens. Clive's hair was disheveled, his breathing rapid. He stopped in mid-protest. "Naomi! Dear, what on earth? Come in!"

"I don't know how to explain..."

"Here, on the couch."

She sat. "Someone, some people in black suits and white socks you know, and everywhere I go I was in a movie all day and now my chair stinks but I don't want you involved..."

A demigod in a blue dragon kimono appeared across the room. "What's wrong, then?" it asked, and her head filled with cliché images of chains, of leather, of Clive strapped at the end of his bed. It was Sean. His head was shaved and he was in full, smeared makeup, but oh God it was Sean.

She half stood. "What are you doing?"

He ignored her. "Clive, daarlin'?"

Clive had pressed her back onto the couch. "Sean, bring this girl a glass of water, then a shot of brandy. Water first, dear. And get dressed. She's frightened enough without the sight of your hairy legs." He sat beside her and took her hand, using the other one to lap his short robe over his crotch. "Now, what's this about men in black suits and white socks and your chair? Are you talking about those government goons?" There was great competence in his voice. "Is someone in your apartment now? Is there an agent outdoors?"

Naomi nodded. He took a glass from Sean and held it for her as she gulped water like a toddler. Coherent talk became possible for her.

"Someone federal; the Pentagon or the FBI It’s been in all the papers, I know you’ve read about it. Sean? You know." The men exchanged a complicit look. "Sean, you know! Clive, he does! Ask him! He was there! He’s my accomplice! I was exposed to that Peakspore, but I wouldn't let the idiot doctors monitor me like they do to their pigs, and then Sean and I destroyed it all. It's ultra-top secret. Like a poison gas."

"Oh?" Clive said, "That explains those men coming here."

Sean remained silent and languid. They might never have met; she couldn't read him except for those lingering views of kinky sex.

"At first it was just Dr. Bayer, the man who developed the stuff. E. James Bayer, like Edward Bear Winnie-ther-Pooh. What a name for a military researcher, right?" She giggled. Felt tears. "He sent Manyblades, his associate, then we got rid of it, Sean and I. But for the past four days it's been these..."

"Men in black suits. Yes," Clive said. He stroked her hand.

Sean finally spoke. "They don't appreciate uppity queer-boys."

"You know the kind of people they are? There's one parked across the street in a car."

Clive came out of a reverie. "Yes, I know the sort." He began to banter. "Sean, where is this girl's brandy? And why haven't you dressed? Do I have to do everything around here? Not that that's anything new to these hands..." He fluttered them.

Naomi was given a snifter of brandy, then the decanter, and a plate of crab and tomato slices with water crackers, and left alone. The birds quieted. Lamp light glowed mellow on Persian miniatures, pale damasks and Chinese tables. The world began to come together. As the men dressed and left, she noted their sounds but still couldn't understand Sean's distance. After a while she fell asleep.

Clive shook her awake, both men hunkered and filling her unfocused sight with their tension. "You were right, dear," Clive told her, "and don't worry about Sean, he's told me all about it. You know, he's had to hide too; they'll double-check every Irish passport at the airport so he can't go home. He found an electronic bug in your apartment. We didn't bother it, we just turned on your radio and got your things."

"Oh." Naomi sat up and rubbed at her face. "What time is it?"

"Now, listen. It's about three in the morning, I don't know. They’ll be up there soon because they heard your radio. We got your check book, and a savings passbook, and Sean found almost four thousand dollars in that cookie jar of yours. You know, you shouldn't keep that much cash in your apartment." He pulled a face. "If that's an appropriate caution. Are you listening? They're all in this pretty bag of yours. I know you just got it, so you still love it. You'll need a purse so you can have two looks."

"You think I should leave?"

"Yes, you must leave San Francisco and just disappear. Now, I'm putting your purse inside Sean's funky duffle bag; funky is your other look from now on. There's your corduroy pants in here, and an army shirt I've grown out of since I've been lifting weights."

"Should I really disguise myself?"

"Naomi, you are disguised," he reminded her. "Now, we saw the men outside, armed. Their guns poke out of their jackets."

"How did you find the bug in my apartment?"

Coyote smell, smells of fur, urine, dust, oozed under the door and through the cracks between their talk. The birds went still.

"You need to get out of that dress and put on the army shirt now, and change your hair. I found your red wig." Naomi couldn't respond. "I'll help you," he said. "Now, is there anything else in your apartment? More money? Stock certificates? Anything valuable? We won't be able to send you anything, Sean says, and you can't contact us."

"Where should I go?"

Eleven

The corner of 14th and Mission was one of the most misbegotten intersections in town, cheek-by-jowl with a pigeon-haunted freeway overpass that joined rising ground just beyond Mission Street's turn to the south. The Indian Center squatted two-storied in red brick along a whole east-west block there, its lower story a series of empty storefronts. Winos, whores, skuzzy launderettes endured the stench of exhaust and mud-moldy alleys, a dreariness and drabness that would suck the spirit from a charismatic evangelist.

The pavement under the freeway in November, 1965 was a small, triangular parking lot, cheap by the month because of vandalism and pigeon droppings. Naomi kept her '58 Dodge there. It was just after nine in the morning; foggy, wet and cold.

Naomi and Clive got off a trolley across from the Indian Center and started walking the half-block to the parking lot. The freeway's din racketed off the dirty buildings and covered every sound but pigeon coo. Naomi's red wig was in two ribbon-bound tails before her ears and thus narrowed her round face. A necklace of bells and plastic flowers covered much of her chest. A lipsticked flower adorned her right cheek. She and Clive both wore multiple layers of dun-colored cotton with Clive, half-joking, in drag.

Naomi's peripheral vision had become acute. The duffle bag wasn't that heavy, if it was slung far enough up on her back. She would get used to doing the braids. Her blue Dodge was anonymous, so that was all right. She would take back streets and Skyline Boulevard to Santa Cruz because of the road blocks, then go to Big Sur. Big Sur was crowded with hippies; she'd be invisible, and think. Clive had told her that Sean agreed ("He hates women, you know. I can't imagine what got into your head about him and the IRA. I mean, Irish Republican Army?" "Okay, let's drop it, Clive..."). And he fretted that there wasn't a quick place for her to go.

Then two bad things happened on the way to her car. A silhouetted head flitted in the parking lot, and a footstep scuffed behind her saying, "Manyblades." The footstep padded into an alley.

"Stop," she said.

They paused, alert to the empty space behind her Dodge.

"There's someone behind us, too," Clive said. "He must have been on the trolley with us."

"Or following in a car. He's in the alley."

There was nothing more happening in the parking lot, and no one else on the sidewalk. They might have been alone, except for street traffic. Seconds crawled by.

"There he goes behind that van," Clive whispered, fumbling into his dime-store purse. "Toward the Ukranian Bakery."

"I see him."

"Give me your keys and stay here. Be careful of whoever's in the alley. I'll get your car."

"You sure?"

"Can you think of anything better? They don't expect someone like me."

"Right." She handed him her keys. "Be careful."

"Always, darling. Sean awaits."

He was off, flouncing a little for her benefit. Naomi grinned for him.

The flash of light was as horrendous as the explosion. It filled the parking lot, then one lane of east-going freeway traffic, with yellow-orange-red, then with black boiling smoke. The explosion bounded and boomed and sent metal chunks into freeway and buildings and street, gouging masonry and asphalt. Naomi was into the street, dodging cars as they skidded and crashed, and into the alcove of the Indian Center's broad stairway.

"Get her!"

"Where'd she go?"

"Shit!"

"What about the redskin? Where'd he go?"

"Shit!"

"Out of my way!"

"What in the name of Christ happened?"

"Here, help me with this guy!"

"What happened?"

She was staring and screaming and staring. The sidewalks and street were filled with people screaming and staring, and cars stopped at crazy angles. All of their horns worked. People lined up along the freeway above the carnage. The black cloud boiled above them and ate fog.

Naomi looked into the deep-walled, narrow alley across the street, where Dustin Manyblades had gone. Perhaps he did not see her. She must go; the shouting black-suits were to her right, running through the melee, looking for her. She backed away from the daylight, felt the first upward step with her heel and began to ascend the Indian Center stairs backward, watching. Half-way up her foot bumped a crouching, fuddled drunk‒"What happened?"‒and she continued to climb.

Then she was in a big, very big room with rails around the open stairwell, all wood floors and paneled walls and ceiling, no lights, stygian. Naomi turned for a better look. An opening in the back wall made a counter top that let from a small office. Fluorescent light sheeted the opening. The row of windows above the street was so dirty it didn't need curtains. An Indian woman, drawn there by the noise, turned curiously. "Can I help you?" the woman asked.

"Do you have any pamphlets about the Center?"

"In the rack." The woman indicated a wooden rack on the wall. Yellow and green flyers lopped and fanned.

Naomi didn't hear Manyblades until he was at her side. She whirled for the stairwell. He was there before her, crouched.

She spun to the window. "Please! Miss!" she called. The Indian woman had disappeared.

Stench of charred meat. "Clive! Oh, God!"

She charged Manyblades, hoping he would dodge rather than be pushed downstairs. He did not dodge; he caught her in a bear hug and jammed her face against the zipper of his jacket. "No!" he growled.

"Clive!"

"Listen! Not down there! The fucking feds are down there!"

"What difference does it make?"

"They're after you!"

"God damn it, do you think I don't know that? They killed my friend! Let me go!" She bit for his neck and he half flung her, then grabbed her again. They braced on the top step and measured each other, panting in an awkward embrace. The office phonograph played the high, quavering flute music of desert people. She asked, "Aren't you going to help them?"

Tension and irony thinned his voice. "It's a good chance to be on the winning side, isn't it?"

Naomi squirmed out of his grip. "You're lying to me. Something has changed, and you don't want them to get me."

"Right."

"What?"

"That. The bomb."

"Oh, sure!"

There was shouting at the foot of the stairs. Something grotesque went wrong with Manyblade's sculpted face. His long legs pumped as if he were running; his steps minced. As Naomi backed up he careened toward a door by the wall rack and fell.

Footsteps stomped on the stairs. There were confused curses and body thumps. The drunk's head appeared. Another head followed, a gun barked. The heads disappeared.

Naomi ran to Manyblades' inert body. "You all right?"

She grabbed his arms, fighting the bulk of her duffle bag when it slid sideways. She dragged him through the door and kicked it shut, then through another door. She was strong, able, clear-headed, and joy or grief or maybe just life, sizzled in her veins.

"He's been killed!" It was the woman from the window, shrieking, sniveling and turning toward a round-headed manshape that appeared from behind a desk.

Naomi dragged Manyblades, irrationally gloating at her escape. The man’s silhouette opened another door and she passed through. She glimpsed a narrow, unlit hall that ran forever to a dim window. She steered toward the light; the door closed. There was a shot and a tinkle of glass. A yell, "Hey! Cut that crap!"

"Where are they?"

"Who?"

"That woman with the Indian!"

The voices were becoming faint. There was a dirty door with a white porcelain knob.

"Which one do you mean?" Very faint now. He was covering for them, God knew why.

Another door, another white knob. This was much less exciting. Two more zigzagging, ell-shaped little rooms, more and more quiet, dustier, until Naomi lost her sense of direction.

And purpose. She sat, half on the duffle bag. She slipped from it onto the floor with Manyblades' head between her splayed legs. The duffle strap yanked at her shoulder. She released his wrists, then the strap. She stared at stained wallpaper. After a long time she fondled his forehead, pushed a lock of his loosened ponytail behind his ear.

"You all right?"

He didn't answer. The flesh had shrunk across his broad cheekbones.

"God, I hope you're all right."

At least he was breathing. She should raise his shoulders. She wrestled her thigh to a position beneath him, supporting his head against her chest. His breathing deepened. Pink, frothy blood slipped from between his lips and dribbled onto his neck. She sat, then slumped, over him. God, she hoped he was all right. She was so thirsty she could die.

The door opened enough for the Indian woman to peer in. She echoed Naomi: "You all right?"

"Yeah. He needs a doctor."

"One's coming. Go in the bathroom."

Naomi looked around the small room. An open door by the window showed ancient, six-sided white tiles on the floor. "Yeah." She went.

She heard someone, perhaps the man from the office, enter. "I brought caffeine pills," he called. "I'm shoving them down his throat so maybe he'll keep pumping."

"Good," she called back. She was standing at the closed bathroom door, wondering if she dared to open it. It was small, even for a hotel bath.

"Got it in a lung," the man commented to himself, and left before she got the nerve to open the door and face him.

After a while the woman came to shoo her into the bathroom again. Again the man entered. She heard something heavy being dragged.

"Why do I have to be in here?" Naomi called. Reaction had set in; she trembled from her bones.

The man was straining with some weight. "Because I said."

When he was gone Naomi reentered the room. There was a big, loose-buttoned mattress in a corner, half-covered with a sheet of oilcloth. For an operation. Dustin was on it, propped against the wall.

Next time Naomi was in the bathroom she was locked in with a jar of water. The plumbing didn't work. There was no water in the toilet tank. She sat on the toilet seat and stared through the little window into a light well. There were footsteps and voices audible through the door and, twice, a sharp cry. She waited and cried. She wrapped her arms around her knees and rocked on the toilet cover. Light disappeared and city-glow took its place. When the man, or whoever, opened the door, the main room was pitch-black. He held a flashlight to show her where to follow, but she did not see his face.

"You some kind of militant Indian?" she asked.

"Hunh. Dustin helps out here."

Manyblades was propped on the mattress, the mattress was propped on a plywood wedge. That and a bedpan were the only things in the room.

"I'm hungry," she said.

"All right."

"And it's cold."

"Yeah."

After a while he brought cheese sandwiches and water, then threw a couple of scratchy wool blankets after them. "Stay here. Don't let him move around." Light from the hall outlined him. Muscled, not tall. He could be any man, except for the extravagant length of the skinny braid that hung by his arm. He locked the door behind him.

Twelve

They were in that increasingly foul room for almost a month. Naomi's paranoia came and went, but eventually left. The voices in her head quieted and the golden force-lines disappeared.

Nothing about intimacy with Manyblades disgusted her; not his voice or touch, not his rank smell. She was surprised, when the shock of pursuit diminished and she finally realized it. Peace seized her, and a perverse contentment. For the first week she nursed him with medicine and bandages that the man from the office brought morning and night. Sometimes, she noted wryly, the man’s silhouette lacked braids and his hair appeared chopped straight off at earlobe length: wigs. She shrugged and ate cold sandwiches or stew in the can that came with the medicine, and fed her patient with canned bouillon and orange juice.

"Call me Dustin," he said.

He was propped against the plywood wedge. She had just turned off the light and covered up.

"All right. Call me Naomi."

"That's better." He paused for breath. "Hate sleeping with a stranger." Another breath. "Makes me feel so cheap."

It was his first sign of recovery; Naomi mustered a snicker.

When he was awake, he liked for her to comb his hair. Their benefactor brought a paperback of Greek tragedies, and she began to read them aloud. After a week they were given a radio. Manyblades was reported dead. Naomi, said the announcer, had a suspicious library of books on biochemistry and led a gang of revolutionaries. She had been sighted in Danville, then in Antioch. The media's interest in her faded. There was never enough water, although someone turned on the supply to the bathroom. The water came out gray-brown, but at least the toilet was usable after she primed it.

One afternoon Dustin became feverish and began to thrash on the mattress. Naomi had been trying new hairstyles on her wig. She dropped it and rushed to him. "Easy, cowboy." She knelt and tucked the army blanket tighter under his shrunken shoulders. He sang in slurred Navajo, a quiet raving like a chant as his frantic fingers plucked at the blanket. His open eyes stared past her.

Naomi cradled and rocked him like a mother, smelled pinon and felt dry heat reflected from a red rock wall. Sensed long, long distances. Waves of his yearning swept over her until she thought she would weep. "Yeah, cowboy. It won't take long, you'll go back," she crooned as she rocked him. "But it's not a home now, your reservation. If the feds find out you’re alive they’ll want you, and home will become just a space for them to hunt. You."

He eased and got quiet, so she hunkered back and watched his drawn face. His memories haunted her. It was a sense of place; space; belonging. She wanted it.

When she settled into the restricted routine, and Manyblades was conscious most of the day, there was a lot to talk about. Again, Naomi was surprised.

"You say you're from Prescott?" he asked one afternoon as she put down the book.

He was propped against his wedge; she was against the wall at the end of the mattress. She looked up. "Sort of. Dad built a lab there, so we left Berkeley when I was about thirteen."

"What kind of lab?"

"Most of the time, math; he had a big computer. For physics." Dustin's eyebrows rose and he sat up straighter. She went on, "He researched as much as he could; you know how it is. The grants took a lot of paperwork. But he didn't have to teach any more, so I guess it evened out."

"Dead?"

"Yes."

"Bessemer? Before my time on campus."

"He converted a barn over there. It was one of those 19th century stone affairs like the Mormons built, solid as the proverbial shithouse; you know the sort of building." Dustin smiled. She went on, "A half-ass contractor upgraded the wiring. Three years ago dad and mom were in the lab, and the whole thing novaed."

Dustin was shocked. "Bad."

After that, Naomi chattered as if she'd found a friend. Dustin sat against the wedge and listened, or talked with shortened breath about his boyhood near Kayenta and the Monument Valley. Sometimes he made up songs, mostly indecent, and sang them for her.

Dustin was healing against all known odds, as Naomi had half-expected because of his Peakspore stench. But he was a rotten patient, demanding and overconfident. When he moved too much his incision bled, or he began coughing painfully. Naomi would flare, shout and shove him down. "God damn! God damn!" she would yell, weeping and furious. "What are you trying to do to yourself? Mumbling your goddam baby Navajo, then getting macho when you wake up!"

And weak and flailing as she held him down he would grind out, "Get off me, Naomi, or I'll have to hurt you," a patent absurdity.

A few minutes later he would come around, then they would both blush and apologize. And Naomi would remember, and hoard, the feel of his body. She called herself horny.

"Why did you do it?" she asked one afternoon. She was thinking of Bayer's military research.

Manyblades misunderstood. He shrugged his good shoulder and looked away, pushing at his long hair. "It was the bomb. I didn't know they'd kill you."

"Kill me. Oh. What was that for?"

"Figure it." Manyblades paused to breathe. His voice was whispery and his sentences short. "You're a network stringer."

"I was."

"You were. International exposure. Top secrets."

"Okay, but why death? Why not just buy me?"

"Figure it."

She looked out the dirty window and began. The more she thought, the less sense it made. If she reacted to Peakspore as Bayer and Dustin seemed to expect, if she were extra strong (wrong, except when she was mad) and neglected to age, extra smart (wrong again) but wouldn't defend herself like the sow in that pen‒although there had been only the psychic incidents and black rages after those times of beauty, and that for so short a time‒but then, wasn't Dustin healing? He should be dead. Of course, he'd probably inhaled more of the stuff than she had.

Then she thought she had it figured. Peakspore had made her more human, or more alive; she reveled in all manifest creation. And like the caged animals that night with Sean, she was claustrophobic and rebelled absolutely against anything that thwarted her. Which was probably true of Dustin, and probably accounted for some of his occasional awfulness.

But according to the Pentagon's expectations, and the experimental results so far, any woman could bear twin children each year for forty or fifty years. And every last one of the children would be crazy. At least until adulthood, and maybe beyond, if the experimental young in Bayer’s lab were an indication. Only time would tell.

If the chemical‒(or excipient, to be used on maybe exported foods? drink? cigarettes? Well, why not?)‒if the chemical were in her possession, which the press declared, she might use that stuff to make a political point. She might gas whole towns with it. She might dump it into water supplies. Or maybe use a crop-duster over Fort Ord. Or the Pentagon.

Not a bad idea, actually. Taste of their own medicine.

Two possibilities, if she were to use Peakspore like a guerilla, and urban guerillas were chic. One: She could cause crazy overpopulation, and people and critters would eat everything on the planet. Or two: She could cause a crazy murderous overpopulation, eating and breeding and slaughtering itself off the planet.

"The truth lies somewhere in between," she muttered, and wondered what playwright said it first. Anhouil, probably. Or Albee.

Manyblades had shoved himself onto his elbow and was trying to heft the plywood wedge onto its short side so he could sit up. "Between what?" He gave up on the wedge and lay back down.

"Nothing. I was figuring."

And were Dustin and Beyer aware of her sensitivity to people thought and mood? Could they not be? Was it permanent? Would it grow from the knowledge of a person's mood when she was touched? Imponderable. But now she always knew how Manyblades felt, in an encapsulated sort of way, with or without touch. Maybe her sensitivity was growing. Maybe he shared it.

"Naomi?"

"Yeah."

"I worked at the lab." He panted.

"Yeah?"

"I liked knowing. Top-secret clearance."

Naomi was sitting across the room, cleaning one fingernail with another. "That figures."

More panting, then, "That was a big confession."

She looked up. Regret had bracketed his down-turned mouth.

"I see," she said softly.

"I guess I apologized when I followed you upstairs."

"Thanks, cowboy."

He was tiring toward another nap. "Get back to reading The Medea, all right?"

"Sure."

Naomi's horniness and pity kept her awake nights until she had to admit that they were something else. She didn't like what the something else might be, so she called it respect. Dustin was bright, a good chemist. He was maybe bitter toward Anglos, but it didn't show; most of the time he was just gentle and wry. So she had to respect the man.

Then once as she twisted on the mattress she bumped into him and he had an erection. She didn't move away, and neither did he. After a time she realized he was awake. "Well ya-ta-hey," she murmured. He kissed her, soft and long, and her head floated and spun and sang.

Afterwards, his head on her shoulder, he said, "You see Coyote."

Not a coyote, or coyotes, but the trickster presence: Coyote. And it wasn't a question.

Naomi's diaphragm lurched beneath his hand. "Yes."

"My mother respects him." His tone was close to reverence. He waited for an answer.

Naomi spoke carefully, wanting his trust but still afraid to reveal her full experience with Peakspore. "I don't know whether your Coyote appears to people. But the animals are beautiful to me, and sometimes when I'm frightened I think I see one. Or smell one."

He stroked her belly once, twice; was taken by sleep.

When it was time to go, Dustin could walk around the room. Naomi emerged from the bathroom to find him arguing with their savior through the half-open door.

"Here."

Dustin thrust a sheet of paper at her. It was a penciled ground plan of the building. Typed beneath it was, "WOmAn Leave TOniTe. FOllOW THe ArroWs I dReW. DoN'T cOMe bAcK."

It took time to digest, although Naomi had spent hours and days preparing for this.

"Who is this from?"

The invisible man in the hall shifted his feet. "Me and the Board."

"Like this?" Dustin demanded. "She's wanted by every policeman in the country and you kick her out?"

"Well, she can't stay."

"She can't just walk out, either. This place has to be under surveillance from every-which angle."

"No, not from that door on the plan there. It goes into that laundromat around the corner. When she comes out with that duffle, they'll think she's been washing her clothes."

Naomi glanced up from her fidgeting fingers. "Might work."

"It'll work." The man shuffled his feet again. "Look, I know it'll work. Don't you have anywhere you can go?"

"No, she doesn't. And she's street-stupid. She won't make it ten feet without some help."

"Rough." The man seemed to think. "Give me that paper. I'll give you an address where you can sleep tonight."

"Thank you."

"Don't show your face. Not anywhere."

"I won't."

"The boy here died." Dustin swiveled his head to her; they traded a look and he took her hand, tight. "We put Dustin's ID on that drunk they shot."

"I see."

"You can make some calls from this place."

"I don't have anyone anymore."

Silence. Dustin looked at her again, surprised.

"Yeah," the man said.

"Get her out of town," Dustin said.

"We'll figure something out."

The man left. Naomi sank to the mattress and wrapped her knees with her arms, looking up at Dustin. After a while she said, "Well, I'm ready. How about you? You be all right?"

"I'll be all right." He was panting.

"You have a punctured lung, and worry about me?"

Dustin shrugged. "Why not?"

"I guess so. Thanks for the help just now." Her voice was too bright; he'd know she was lying. "But I have plans; I'll be fine. Where are you going to go? Home, I bet. Arizona."

"Maybe. Do you have a home?"

"If I did have, they'd be waiting for me."

"Yeah. So I'm worried a little." He smiled. "That okay with you?"

"I'll worry about you, too."

She wanted nothing more than for him to hold her, to thank her, anything. But he didn't. Maybe their sex had been nothing but that, sex. He avoided touching her for the rest of the day. When night came they separated with the limp handshake that is Navajo-specific.

Naomi had learned the following from Manyblades: How to get a dead woman's birth certificate, social security number and driver's license; the name of a forger in Tiajuana; where she could cash a check in any amount, no matter who she was, if the check was good and she was willing to pay a service charge of twenty-five to thirty-three percent of the amount; the mating habits of the pronghorn antelope and the domestic sheep; the address of the best cafe in Kayenta, Arizona.

And why Dustin was surviving. Bayer's rodents, once gassed by Peakspore, became massively strong and healthy in addition to living a long, very long time. If diseases struck them, if arthritis crept through their joints, if senility dogged them, they simply lived on and endured. If attacked, they had reserves enough of strength to slay armies. Naomi might outlast the Atomic Age. Or she might go crazy with the weariness of being alive and one day kill herself.

In Tijuana she learned that she was pregnant with twins.

Thirteen

"Bernadette, it's Naomi. I don't want to impose, but do you have a couple of minutes? I need to talk..."

Click.

"Shirley, I'm in trouble. Can we meet somewhere?" Pause. "They have? How many times did they come by? Yes. Well, thanks."

Click.

"Dr. Forthinger, thanks for picking up. I'd like to make a statement, and I wonder whether you'd be willing to receive a copy and maybe pass it on. To the press, yes." Long pause. "I understand about the grants. Of course. Can you recomm..."

Click.

She had the twins, Clive, a boy, and Wellesley, a girl, without anesthetic in a free clinic in Pasadena. She had been worried that the Peakspore would make her either brutal and angry or, now that nearly a year had passed, so passive she would accept neglect. During labor she was fierce and furious at her impossible situation. "Get a goddamned doctor!" she kept yelling at the panicky midwife, but the only doctor was busy with a caesarian in the next room. She thought she would be torn to pieces by the bulk of the twins as she panted and blew out and squeezed and tried not to thrash around. She half-heard her wails for Dustin, and sensed the midwife's horror when her panic strength ripped out the leather wrist restraints. She kept breathing the prescribed stupid breaths, hyperventilating and raving, gripping the gurney's rim above her head as she pushed and bore down and willed the births.

Afterward she didn't remember it, and she felt no weakness or pain. She was in a double bed with a pewling infant on each arm. Clive was fair and hungry. Wellesley was dark and scowling and had a headfull of stiff black hair. Naomi was more tired than she had ever been in her life. But she chuckled; she had no idea how to raise children, or how she would do it, but when she looked at her babies she felt like laughing and rolling down a sunny hill in new grass. It was August 13, 1966.

The gypsy-operated flophouse where she stayed was noisy with music and full-tilt fighting. The childless manager was a huge woman with a developing moustache and the furious, darting eyes of an axe murderess. She welcomed Naomi and the children home with exaggerated pokes and coos. "Rest! Heal!" she bellowed, and gathered the twins to her black-draped bosom. "You're skin and bones. You'll have to move as soon as the owners find out there's kids in this dump, so take it easy while you can."

Naomi felt as strong and health-invested as a barnyard virgin. She wanted to brag that there was no need for healing. She wanted to dance.

The narrow halls of the hotel were lined with ornate tables and chairs in imitation wood. Fringed shawls and bouquets of giant paper flowers covered the tables. Over each hung a diseased-looking print of the Sacred Heart. Women shrieked at their men or skulked the halls but fell silent when she approached. All of them wore black with glittering assortments of gold jewelry. Their malice thundered in her head. Only the manager spoke to her.

Naomi used the time to think about options. There weren't that many; money was low, and the post office displayed an old photo of her once used by the United Press International. Three days after she had the twins, the manager entered the lobby with eyes darting toward the passing cars and hands that shook. Naomi realized it was Friday, the day the hag went to the post office to mail the rent. That's where anyone would see the pictures of the the FBI's most-wanted criminals, like her. She disappeared with the children.

As Phyllis Norton, Naomi had trouble with her co-workers at the Redding Telephone Company, though the inner voices and dashed lights became rare. She alternated between gushy and secretive and was sometimes short with customers. The other women jockeyed for meaningless promotions. Her paycheck only covered part of the babysitting. Whenever she found peace she was haunted by Dustin's wounded loving and his painful, querulous fight to recover. She could still smell that room. Often she would rehearse his gentle, nearly tentative touch; the tender care for her in his eyes.

One day a car parked across from the telephone office all day; a yellow Mercury sedan. But when Naomi left work it was gone, and she told herself to forget it.

Wrong. Next day she was in a ladies' room cubicle when the chief operator entered with the branch manager. They were talking about a wire tap for Naomi's home phone. Naomi sat wretched and awkward, her feet out of sight on top of the bin for sanitary napkins. She stared at sheets of wet toilet paper on the floor until the women left, then squirmed miserable and guilty into her clothes. She snuck home without clocking out.

Curiosity made her call The Chronicle though, and ask for herself. An echo from a thousand hollow miles away assailed her ear. It was her first wiretap.

Laytonville is a bright-aired village among black oaks as tall as flagpoles. It is set in meadows between steep mountains. The nearest real town is to hell and gone. For a month she pumped gas at the Greyhound combination bus stop/filling station, wearing shorts and fishnet stockings demanded by her boss. Business picked up. The day she got a telephone, she ordered out for pizza and apricot pie. Her voice echoed again. Her stomach didn't even sink; she hung up and began repacking. Went to the gas station to quit her job.

At the gas station were newspaper racks for The Chronicle. The headline of the second lead story read:

PEAKSPORE: FRIEND OR FOE?

"Bad stuff," said a dark, long-haired man who came up beside her.

"That's what they say," she agreed. He looked familiar but she couldn’t place him.

Just then Wellesley’s errant little fist cuffed Clive a good one on the ear. Clive let out a howl and his waving, wobbly fist cuffed her right back. But it looked deliberate. They weren’t six months old.

She took the newspaper to a park. The article declared that Bayer was researching again in a custom-built laboratory. He had regained his status as the fatherless wunderkind who made good, a noble exemplar to youth with an innovative approach to modern warfare. Naomi read it behind the wheel and ate apricot pie from her sticky hand. She frowned, sneered. Wellesley’s little fist again struck her brother. Naomi wiped her hand with a paper napkin and headed north.

***

In the following days she slept in the car, washed in gas stations, and tried, again, to find Dustin. The San Francisco Indian Center wouldn't talk to her on the phone or acknowledge knowing him. The Navajo tribal office offered to send tourist information and maps. The reservation phone book did not list a Manyblades, and after a couple of minutes she remembered he would have an alias because he had been reported dead. There were no professional chemists listed in any scientific journal with a Native American surname. She gave up.

In Eureka she ran into Sean. Literally. He stopped his car ahead of her without signaling, and she rammed him: smash, tinkle. Steam erupted from her radiator and she heard a muffled "fucking hell!" from the car in front. If she hadn't recognized his curse she would have fled. But she was beside his door in an instant, grinning like a chimp because she actually knew someone who didn't want to arrest her. She grabbed him as he got out, hugging and bouncing and squealing, "It's you! It's Sean! My God!"

But cheek to cheek, flesh to flesh, she again smelled the old stench and sensed his sadism.

Sean held her at arm's length and goggled until they were honked off the pavement. "You're not hurt, then?" he finally asked from the sidewalk.

"No."

Something about him looked different. The eyebrows? The eyes? She was too gleeful to pursue it, but resumed her usual cautions. He went to her steaming car and peered through the passenger window. "And what's this, babes? Twins? They're crying, poor things; frightened. Here; there's parking in the alley behind this restaurant. I'll buy you a coffee. Do you think your auto will drive?"

"Sure. The radiator always steams anyway. It's not even dented."

The parking lot was a narrow space between brick buildings. Already Naomi had learned the potential danger of small spaces like that, but the twins, as usual, were whacking each other and bawling for a hug. Also, hadn't Sean been her ally against Peakspore? Hadn't he helped her escape in San Francisco? She backed into a space beside his coupe, then struggled with her collapsible baby buggy in the trunk. It didn't want to come out.

Sean wandered to a pair of garbage bins across the alley and dropped a paper bag into one of them. He came back smirking. "Insurance. The wonders of the transistor," he said, but she didn't understand. "May I carry one of the children for you?"

"No, don't bother, I have this buggy. Can you unfold it?" She unstrapped the babies and carried one in each arm into the restaurant while Sean stopped smiling and tried to master the intricacies of opening a folded, oddly heavy, "pram" as he termed it. After Naomi locked all the hinges in place he ordered two cappuccinos with pastry. The prices, posted behind the counter, were twice those in San Francisco.

The restaurant was a converted warehouse with an embossed tin ceiling and wainscoting. It smelled like old buildings do. The plywood booths were built in agonizing right angles. Naomi decided that even with a job, she would not last in such a town. She faced the front window, so its light shadowed Sean's face but gave her a view of the street. Every business name she saw included the words "Old Town."

She and he pumped one another for news. Naomi learned nothing except that Sean had married and was back in the US for more news. She offered him a garbled version of the truth. She quieted the babies with crumbs from her danish. They calmed down, but continued to smile one minute and bang each other the next. One of them had a tooth, and bit; that was Wellesley.

"So these babes are yours?"

"Well, yes. I mean, of course."

"But twins?"

She nodded.

"The dark one might almost be an Indian."

"Really," she said. "The light one could be Swedish. That's Clive, the light one."

Sean offered Clive his finger. "You won't name the father, then?"

"Obviously."

Long pause. Sean reclaimed his finger. She said, "I suppose you know about Clive's death."

"Long time ago, my girl." Sean sipped, frowned, set his mug precisely on the same wet ring. "Yes, I did know. Your police came to the apartment."

"Oh." Pause. "Wow. Did they find you?"

"I'm afraid so."

An oriental man in fishing clothes paused by their booth to light a cigarette. Sean waved at the smoke and the man left with his long, flexible pole. Humboldt Bay is not a place for fly fishing, which uses such a pole: Naomi would look for trouble before she left the building. Maybe she’d take the front door out. The perpetual knot in her stomach began to writhe. She measured the two customers at the counter, woman and woman.

"So you were arrested?"

"They took me in."

One older; maybe mother and daughter.

"Did they hurt you?"

"No, but they had questions. They were cautious with an alien, you see. Especially as I carry such credentials."

"You mean your press pass?"

Did his eyes flick wide?

"Exactly."

The waitress brought another pair of cappuccinos. After she was gone he said, quietly, "There may be a supply of Peakspore at the Salinas military facility."

She nodded. "Fort Ord? I have plastique."

"Are you located within range? If not, I can get a supply as well."

The women at the counter turned and smiled at the gurgling twins. Naomi straightened their blanket and patted their bellies until they cooed. The woman returned to her talk.

"I can get there, if the stuff's really in place."

The fisherman reappeared on the sidewalk. He carried a grocery bag with his pole. He got into a coupe.

Sean smiled and shrugged. "Really there? Are you suspicious, acushla?"

The fisherman drove off.

"You know that man, don't you? The one who just left?"

Sean looked puzzled. "The fisherman?"

"And you knew I was in the car behind you when you stopped without signaling."

"I beg your pardon?" Sean lowered his voice and leaned toward her. His voice got intense. "Naomi, no! This is Sean, love! We're friends! Co-conspirators! Fellow burglars! Felons! Each sought by your FBI!"

"You did know I was driving behind you."

"How? I'm a stranger in Eureka." Brightening now, relaxing, he added, "...in a straaaange land, if you'll allow it, and I do not know that person with the absurd fishing pole."

And there he was again, like magic; the smallish, open-faced journalist she had met in the San Francisco Mayor's office, awash in consternation and regret, ready to be friends, concerned for her, reaching for her. She was being stupid. No, she was being cautious. Either way, an apology was probably wise. She took his hand and refused to flinch at its touch.

"Sorry, Sean. This whole thing has changed me."

He glanced toward the counter. More loudly, "Motherhood? Faith and begorra, of course it’s changed you! If you'll forgive the Irish-ism." His voice lowered again. "And to answer your unspoken question, my consul convinced the police I had nothing to do with the break-in in Berkeley. They believe I was visiting a friend‒your Clive‒that night. That I'm merely a harmless homosexual evading the stringent homophobic laws of my homeland. I continue to study The American Politico and His Doings for the press, and I am a stringer for The Times of London. I am permitted to stay in your country for nearly another three years, if I wish."

"In Eureka?"

A wry smile. "No. Wifey and I rented a place in Berkeley. Just now I'm hot on the trail of local marijuana farmers."

Sirens began to wail. The twins howled.

"You son of a bitch!" Naomi yelled.

The racket approached, rounded buildings, sounded from every direction.

"No, Naomi! Get into the ladies' room with the babes."

"And be trapped?"

"Do it!"

She slugged him. Got him right between the eyes, which made them go crossed. Then everything turned red and she was ripped to her feet by someone so immensely strong she couldn't struggle. It was Sean, already recovered from her Peakspore-enhanced blow. He had her by the waist; he was actually carrying her with one arm as if she weighed nothing, and he was pushing the twins in their buggy past the horrified women at the counter. And then they were on the street with the building between them and their vehicles.

A squad car rounded the intersection to their right; another approached from the left. The sirens died, but a third came from the alley.

"God damn it Sean! God..."

"Follow my lead!"

"Are you kidding? I'll kill you!"

"Naomi, trust me! Take this buggy!" He set her down.

She didn't take the buggy. She grabbed the twins and clutched them for dear life. But she was not frightened, she was strong 'way beyond merely her motherhood’s strength, and it grew immense the way it had during childbirth. She had whatever it took. She would use it.

And she would kill this power-tripping liar Sean Colum when she had time, a lot of it, because he would die slowly.

The policemen from the first car approached, both half-crouched with their guns drawn and aimed. "Halt!"

Sean's hands shot up. "Officers, thank Christ you arrived! That woman! She's a menace!"

A fourth squad car nosed into the curb. A uniformed man emerged and began to reroute traffic.

"Hands in plain sight!"

"She ran into the restroom! Your backup officer can..."

Naomi joined him. "God, she was going to take our babies! She had a gun!"

"Stand where you are!"

Sean was agog and very, very Irish. "She must be wanting hostages, officer. She was shouting about pigs, and waving that enormous weapon. One of your urban guerillas, no doubt! Like Patty Hearst or Squeaky Fromme."

"Turn around. Hands against the wall."

"Officer, won’t you go inside and get that woman?"

An officer eased into the restaurant. The first to arrive said, "Feet apart!"

"There are other customers in there! She may have taken them. Two there are, and the waitress..."

Sean’s thumb flicked into his palm. An explosion thudded from behind them, instantaneous and sharp as a thunderclap. Sidewalks trembled, windows rattled.

"What was that? Jesus, if your backup man was in the alley..."

The policeman swore. Sean stepped onto the thing that fell from his hand, and Naomi understood his earlier reference to transistors; the trash bag in the alley had just blown up. The twins in Naomi's clutching arms got very still and big-eyed.

"Inside, you two!"

"Not through the building, surely!"

Yet that's where they went. The waitress and customers were crouched behind the counter. The second policeman emerged from the hall to the restrooms, running toward the back door. "Empty," he called. The tin walls echoed.

The policeman herding Naomi and Sean was suddenly too busy for civilians, much less a family with twins. "You two get behind that counter with the others. Wait for me."

"Certainly, officer." Solicitously to Naomi, "Are you all right, acushla?"

"Yes, but the babes..." Naomi whined.

The policemen were gone. Naomi headed for the door. From behind the counter the waitress called. "Miss, that officer said to stay!"

She moved on; Sean followed. The traffic officer had disappeared, drawn by the explosion. Drivers in passing vehicles craned at all the police cars, but drove on. Naomi shoved the twins into their carriage and moved off toward the right. "Bring my car to the mansion at the end of the street," she said.

"Right," Sean said, following.

"You won't see me. Just park and walk off. Leave the motor running."

"I shall."

Her voice turned flat. "There's Iremite 60 in this buggy. If I see you approach us, I'll detonate it. If I'm taken in, I'll report where I got it and tell who directed me to it."

He met her gaze for the first time, but had nothing to say. His eyes were the first to drop.

When he turned toward the alley Naomi walked onto the grounds of the mansion, rounded the signs proclaiming it was a private club, and kept going until she found the drive behind it. There she hotwired a step van and began driving south.

At Garberville she rolled it into the south fork of the Eel river. She and the twins caught a Greyhound for the Bay Area. She couldn't decide whether it was Sean or the fisherman who alerted the police.

***

Naomi had a baby book covered in white vinyl. She began writing notes about the twins.

My babies seem normal. Hell, they are normal. Adorable. Worth the whole sordid adventure and the continual hiding. At six months they mostly just nurse and pee and coo. They don't butt things or stink of chemicals. They each have teeth, but that's not completely unheard of. As Sean-the-bastard noted, one looks Indian, the other Scandinavian. I'm besotted by motherhood. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this pride and happiness. Maybe I won’t have to find an antidote after all.

Because that was her private resolve, as soon as the twins could bear her occasional absence: find Dustin somehow and demand he create an antidote.

***

An egg-candling machine operator for two weeks in Petaluma. Naomi was allergic to feathers. She wrote,

Seven months. The kids are responsive blobs of joy. They tumble over one another like kittens. They pull themselves up on my pants to stand, and squeal when I blow into their necks. Clive is the quiet one. Wellesley is demanding; she leads Clive by a minute or two in appetite, gurgles and frowns, and stares at him to get her way. They eat everything they're offered and sleep all night. And their development still seems normal.

This last statement was not altogether true, but she didn't know how to write about what was happening, or seemed to be happening. There were voices in her head again. Not words, these were articulations of another sort. They had the‒timbre? melodic echo?‒of infantile musing, but were nocturnal and secretive. They quested, they whined or bellowed, they often crooned, but always without sound.

She read everything about babies from Dr. Spock to Dr. Seuss. Watched other children and their mothers in parks and clinics. Decided the voices were Clive and Wellesley's unconscious rehashing of the day as they slept; their reaction to discovery or frustration; that her psychic abilities picked them up. But there was a deep-seated, disturbing element in them, too; a kind of turbulent malignancy, a basso-profundo hum that rattled her chest and secretly snatched toward her heart.

There were other problems to solve, such as maintaining a sleeping place; relearning Spanish slang for her next alias; remaining incognito; earning an honest living. She was acquiring a built-in, abiding fear.

Her black hair had grown and her sharp-featured face was tanned. She no longer belonged to the First World.

***

In Delano she stole a whore's green card and got a job taking food to Cesar Chavez's striking farm workers. She ladled beans and rice into tinfoil plates at truck-side. When she squinted through the eternal dust there were no police cars except at the fence, no waiting black-suits except in the police cars; only flat rows of lettuce or carrots to the horizon. But of course there were informers set to look for pinko-commie-faggot rabble-rousers. They looked like everyone else. One of them was discovered in a weir box beaten and drowned, and for days the camp hummed with astonished satisfaction.

She celebrated the twins' first birthday with a yellow Duncan Hines cake mix, Betty Crocker chocolate frosting, and a scented green candle stub stuck on top. The babies watched the flame from the cot in her tent. They took a simultaneous breath and blew out the candle.

Funny first birthday for Clive and Wellesley. So all right, let’s think about the "seem" part of their "normal".

They don't talk, or even try. That's not altogether surprising, because half the time I speak Spanish and the other half I cuss. They probably don't know which language to use. They're both awkward when they walk, like babies are supposed to be.

So. When I lit that candle and they blew it out, I got a funny feeling from them, almost of satisfaction. And I didn't know they had that kind of muscle development; they're not supposed to. Acuity like that means they could run if they want to despite their (assumed?) awkwardness. And I sure didn't tell them to blow. I'd swear they noticed my surprise, because they stared at each other for a minute.

Maybe they just took a cue from me when I inhaled to blow for them. Maybe I'm just scared of the spooky, more demanding change in their nighttime voices. Maybe I'm just scared for them; I'm scared most of the time. And I can't forget the animals in that lab.

***

The strike ended and she applied for welfare, Aid for Families with Dependant Children. The social worker's interview turned on Naomi's work history.

"What you need is a systematized transitional option," the woman told her, "and I'm afraid this office lacks a parallel logistic."

"What?"

"It will take up to six weeks for your total eligibility to qualify, Mrs. Ordoñez. The program has a policy regarding functional mobility such as yours."

"What?"

A square, wary-looking man waited in the lobby. He wore a dark suit and shiny black shoes, and his scalp showed through his short black hair. An amiable-looking blond man in slacks and jacket lounged beside her VW.

"Shit!"

She ran bug-eyed to get the twins from the babysitter. As she did, the first dark-suit sprinted to his car to follow, and backed around a mangy-looking tan dog right into the other man's car. Crumple, tinkle, cuss. The dog could be a coyote. It ran in front of her pounding feet most of the way home. She abandoned the VW.

Fourteen

Sean was wrong about Fort Ord. While staying in Modesto, though, Naomi heard about barrels of Peakspore at Carquines Straits, where the Sacramento River enters the bay. It was the following summer; the children at nearly two years old ran and danced with the size and agility of five-year-olds. They never spoke.

Naomi had black braids on top of her head and an acquired taste for cilantro. She was called Morelos and lived in a slum cottage on functional mobility and food stamps. She saved enough money to order a telephone but a wire tap, tinny and space-filled, drummed right past her mobile tympanum into her heart.

Her neighbor was a Mexican-American earth-mother with a salon Afro named Rosalia who had eight kids. Pedro, her husband, had a broad face with sharp features that reminded Naomi of Dustin. He was called Pete and serviced fork lifts. At night he helped men like himself repair hundred-dollar cars.

The night Naomi heard the wire tap, she and Rosalia shared a beer on Naomi's back porch. They watched the men swap lies around a yellow droplight. Smells of drying grasses, cooking masa and manure settled with the dew.

"We had a visitor last night when you was at the store," Rosalia told her. While watching for a reaction she braided green yarn into a daughter's hair. The girl sat on a stool between her mother's legs. Wellesley lolled in a canvas stroller left over from Rosalia's last baby, watching and pushing herself back and forth with her outsized feet.

"Yeah?" Naomi said.

"Yeah. Wanted to know about the lady with two kids next door to us."

Naomi's vision darkened, then cleared. She couldn't see the other woman's expression behind her cloud of frizzed hair.

"What else?"

"He said this lady was dangerous and ran with a bunch of commies. The picture he showed us coulda been you, except she was white, man, you know? I told him you was my cousin." Rosalia turned and gave Naomi a smile brilliant with complicity.

"Hunh," Naomi said. "Thanks." Her fingers had gone numb; she couldn't feel the jelly glass in her hand, but she took a sip of beer from it. "What'd he look like?"

"You know; real shined black shoes and white socks. He was heat, man."

"Yeah."

Rosalia finished one braid and wrapped a hank of green yarn around another bunch of her daughter's hair. Naomi sipped more beer but didn't taste it. Dusk turned to dark. She turned on the porch light.

"They're gonna take out Safeway," Rosalia said.

"Safeway? You mean in Fresno?"

"No, silly. Safeway-Safeway. The main headquarters place. In Oakland."

"Again? Like that time back in Sixty?"

"Yeah."

Naomi was thinking of how she had to leave town that night because her phone was tapped. "Just because they don't hire Negroes?" She poured a little more beer. The tilt of her head brought a braid over her shoulder. Clive, turning the pages of a Readers' Digest on her lap, grabbed it and mouthed the end. Wellesley made spitting noises and waved her arms. Clive ignored her and chewed as he turned another page. Wellesley glared until she was rigid with insult; her brother dropped the hair.

"Not just the Negroes, chica. Because of the pricing and what they sell in different stores. You know; you bought stuff in the barrio."

"Not from no Safeway I didn't! I don't buy from those big chains." Rosalia continued braiding without comment; Naomi filled in the silence. "So they're gonna raid the headquarters? When?"

"Tomorrow. Pete wants to see it. Want to come? We're taking all the kids, so we won’t get too involved."

Naomi grabbed the offer to escape. "Como no? Sure, I'd like to go."

"Yeah, como no?"

The gibbous moon lay rosepetal-pale across the spine of the garage roof. The men chuckled and swore. The twins curled into the women's laps and slept. When the beer was gone the women said goodnight.

Naomi had an ancient Buick spray-painted maroon and brown. She packed it in the dark, then drove it a couple of blocks away. If she came back from Oakland, Pete could drop her and the twins there rather than risk coming back to the house. She wouldn't miss her helpful neighbors very much though, and she regretted that.

They piled into Pete's delivery van before dawn and took off up the San Joaquin Valley. They jabbered in Spanglish and ate crackers and hard salami. They swilled cinnamon-flavored horchata. Naomi sat on the floor between the seats and a playpen. She could only see through the top of the windshield-glare from headlights while it was dark, then telegraph poles against the graying sky, or a eucalyptus like black lace. Clive and Wellesley sat hip-to-hip in the playpen and, solemn-eyed, watched the other children sleep. Clive had his mother's rounded chin and fey tilted eyes, her delicate build. Wellesley's dark hair, as at her birth, stood out from her head like a halo. Her eyes bored straight at the world from under level eyebrows: her father's fierce child.

"Those kids of yours asleep yet?" Rosalia asked. The sun was almost up.

"No. They don't want to miss anything."

"What they doing?" She twisted around until she could see all the sleeping, tangled children. The twins turned together to look at her, then back to their mother. Their delighted nighttime voices crooned in her head. Rosalia sighed in mock exasperation. "They're doing their voodoo again. Watch this. Now they're gonna reach for me at the same time. Watch, Pete."

"Sure." Pete looked into the rear-view mirror. Naomi watched too, feeling sick. The twins lifted their right hands to Rosalia. Dashed yellow lines of light leapt and scattered from their palms. Rosalie and Pete didn't notice the lights.

"Hand me them. They want to watch the sun come up."

"How do you know what my kids want?"

"They told me. They tell their Aunt Rosie everything."

Naomi handed the twins to Rosalia and curled on her side onto her coat. The twins made Rosalia know what they wanted. The same way they made her know, with soundless demands. She wondered whether they would ever talk. She wondered where she would take them tomorrow. She wept a little and listened.

After a while Rosalia told Pete, "These kids are too quiet. You ever notice that? They should be cooing and goo-gooing."

"Goo," Wellesley said.

"Goo," Clive said, and bopped Rosalia with his head.

It became one of those miraculous days when the Sierras floated half-way up the sky from across the valley, a day of heat and birds and flowers. When the van topped the pass into San Leandro, the peninsula across the cobalt bay, the blue-brown hills, the cloud-spattered sky were unattainable simply because of their perfection. San Francisco and the Oakland Bay Bridge rolled toward them at 65 miles an hour. Naomi thought her longing for a home with the twins, and her rage at being denied it, would kill her.

They didn't get to the Safeway headquarters. Traffic filled the streets behind banks of sawhorses to the south, then the west. Giant policemen in riot gear stood astride huge motorcycles, their waists bristling with canisters and war clubs. Beyond them, a block of warehouse roofs squirmed with waving arms and bobbing heads. Bullhorns gave instructions to riot, to use passive resistance, to vacate the premises.

"Putah!" Pedro muttered, "Look at those bastards! They have all the guys penned in so they can't get out!"

"Gonna bust 'em some heads!" Naomi drawled, thinking like a journalist.

"I ain't taking my kids into that."

They veered west back onto the freeway and headed for a cousin's house in Benicia, north. There they watched live television coverage of food being stolen for the poor. They dozed and speculated and ate more salami and crackers. In the afternoon they went out for a restaurant-sized jar of peanut butter and more crackers. The older kids played in the dirt yard beside a pretty retaining wall inset with blue tiles and a wrought-iron gate of black flowers. The babies (their number had swelled to twelve preschoolers with Pete's nieces and nephews) crawled and toddled and fingered and gummed. Everyone was excited; some were exultant. All day, neighbors in the sloping, half-paved streets stood in bare yards behind decorated walls and called to one another with news from Safeway. The poor were getting their share. No one said "Workers of the world, unite!" but it was in the air.

That night there was a big bonfire in a vacant lot; the whole town was fed roast lamb and corn on the cob. No one bothered to ask who paid for a feast for two hundred families, but everyone talked about politics and economic slavery, and Naomi heard mention of the "army dump" over by the Carquines bridge.

A round-faced Indian with a pageboy and a scarred eyebrow tried to make friends with her. A mariachi trio with a fat guitaron, trumpet and guitar played so near to her that Naomi couldn't hear what he said. She smiled and shook her head, then took the twins to Pedro; he was another man, a social shelter. The round-faced man frowned and moved off.

Then the first dark-suit appeared, and Naomi bumped right into him. "Sorry!" he said, and reached to steady her. She panicked, whirled and dashed, and fetched up against the round-faced man.

"Hey!" he said as he steadied her, but he spoke softly, half pleased.

"Sorry," Naomi said, and looked for the federal agent. He was watching her, puzzled and already a little suspicious. Instinct and practice made Naomi offer a sloppy grin; she lurched, leaned against the Indian and twined an arm around his neck. Round-face caught her wrist and grinned back at her. His eyes were hard as stones.

"I kind of like this, lady, but isn't it a little quick? A minute ago you wouldn't speak to me."

The man in the suit turned away. Naomi relaxed and took back her arm.

"Thanks. That guy was getting fresh."

The Indian looked in the right direction, then back at Naomi. He wrapped his arm around her and nuzzled her ear. "That's fuzz," he crooned into her ear. "You know it. You ran into me and pretended I'm your boyfriend like in a B-movie." She nodded. "Whoa! You're wobbly after all!"

"I'm all right." She tried to push him off, tried to stiffen her legs against the recurring smell and threaded lights. They wobbled anyhow.

"Sure?"

"Yes. Thanks."

She walked into a pretty wall and banged her knee.

"Oh, no. Here. You want to go in there?" He had her again, his square hands firm against her ribs. "I'll take you." He helped her up the steps. Visions flashed: clubbed heads, paddy wagons.

"It's all right, really. This is where my friends live."

"I'm taking you inside. That guy's watching you again."

So he went in with Naomi and stayed for a beer, making small talk as people came in to avoid the increasing numbers of plainclothesmen. He kept an eye on her. Over mounting dog-smell, over mounting interior voices, she smiled and teased in Mexican slang and wished she could stay in the bathroom away from his stony eyes.

On their way home, Pete swung through Martinez so they could see the army dump. It was a paved area that undulated across miles of estuary land. An unmarked, electrified, razor-topped fence enclosed many, many martially aligned barrels.

"Santos, what's all that?" Naomi asked. She was sitting in the passenger seat on the way home instead of in the back; a poor man's noblesse oblige.

"The army storage place," Pedro told her. "They say it's fuel, but I know a guy who works there. He says it's chemicals."

"Chemicals?"

"Yeah. Like the stuff they're going to use in 'Nam."

"Let's see it. Stop."

Pedro slowed and turned onto the edge of the road. A guard down the way came out of his cubbyhole and watched. The barrels were back from the fence to form a fire lane, but their stenciled labels were clear.

"What, you writing down those numbers?" Pedro asked. "You some kind of reporter?"

"You are, aren't you?" Rosalia challenged.

"Yeah, I was until I got knocked up. But I'm not any more. Habit, I guess."

"You want to know what that is, I can tell you the numbers won't help. They're just inventory stuff."

"How do you find out what they are?"

"You read the words."

Under the numbers were letters that looked like acronyms. Naomi blushed and wrote them down.

"That guard's coming up," Rosalia said.

They drove beyond him, waving and smiling broadly. Pedro cruised around a curve to another batch of barrels and slowed again. Naomi wrote down new letters and numbers. Then he did it again.

Naomi's eyes grew big; the barrels sitting in the third area were labeled, clearly, "Pkspr." They had a special canvas roof on a pipe frame.

"Must be heat-sensitive," Pete said as he pulled to a stop.

Naomi's dry mouth didn't want to talk. "Thanks, Pete," she croaked, and pretended to write, her head down.

Rosalia leaned between the seats, getting a better view. "Peakspore! Yeah, it can't take heat! Turns into something else." She poked Naomi's shoulder to make a point. "You know about that stuff? It's that mind-bending shit they're trying out! The stuff those two doctors dreamed up at Berkeley!"

Pete became interested. "Yeah! That must be it. I heard about it."

"What is it?" Naomi managed.

"Weird, man!" Rosalia said. "These two guys, some real butch guy and an Indio, man, were cooking it up a while back, but the Indian, he got wasted by the FBI for some other reason. It's a gas that's supposed to make you peaceful."

"So does grass," Naomi reminded her.

Rosalia was not amused; her rounded eyes were fixed on the shaded barrels. "Not like this stuff. This stuff is supposed to be a lifelong high!"

Pedro, patient, said, "No, chica, not exactly. It's just supposed to make you friendly. They want to gas Russia with it and turn everybody into capitalists." He grinned and started driving again.

Naomi didn't talk much on the way home. She wasn't depressed or frightened; she was mad and rational and full of plans.

Next night an Iremite-filled Buick spotted brown and maroon rolled down a hill, through the cyclone fence and into the barrels of Peakspore. A dark-haired young man with two children was sought for questioning, but never found. According to the report that officials gave the papers, the electricity in the splitting fence and the car's dragging muffler made sparks that ignited the gas tank, then the Iremite, with a series of window-shattering roars. But not until the car hit the barrels. A dead-flowery stench filled the paved lot for days.

Fifteen

She was Roberta Pantis in Vallejo until the twins were almost three. She set type for a regional newspaper and swapped dark jokes with the reporters. The twins loved every book she read to them and watched the words over her shoulders. Their penciled attempts to copy her handwriting were unsmudged and successful.

Naomi denied it to herself, but she was learning about psychotic development in the child:

A bully at preschool tore Wellesley's finger painting, and somehow she and Clive broke his arm. The teacher claims, her eyes agog, that it was a perspective painting of an orchard with ranges of blue hills behind it. I believe her. Anyway, now we have to move. Wellesley's rages are too explosive; Clive follows her too slavishly. They fight over nothing.

***

As Phoebe Ysidro in Red Bluff she cleaned a motel with the kids in tow and slept with them in an unfinished room. The work was continual, nasty and untipped. The twins silently read their own bedtime stories but still neglected to speak. Naomi told everyone they were aphasic. After months, she took her savings to order a telephone of her own. The first bill arrived smudged inside the sealed envelope, and when she picked up the receiver she heard the wire tap again.

So okay, the twins are unusual and hard to raise. Apart from their size, they look, and most of the time act, like other three-year-olds. The clinic says they just don't want to talk. I know they understand speech. They're affectionate. As long as they're not provoked, they're friendly with strangers. And Lord knows, they're active.

Part of it is, they're so damned bright. They read. They write problems in addition and subtraction that they discovered from playing with checkers. Their physical acuity is crazy; they use knives. Yes; they cut salami into thin, even slices. I feel fifty.

***

When the children reached four they were as tall as eight-year-olds. They all lived in Santa Rosa in a rotting lath-and-plaster guest house behind the home of a misanthropic widow. Naomi set type on the graveyard shift and collected her mail at work. The other typesetters bickered or flirted; she spent the time still haunted by the feel of Dustin's hands and his querulous fight to recover. She rationalized the twins' aberrant behavior as best she could.

Maybe four-year-olds are naturally savage. Maybe Wellesley and Clive were reacting to their screwy life or their mother's continual fear. One Saturday morning of cleaning and shopping she realized they looped other people's anger, adopting, augmenting and returning it until it reached critical mass and exploded. It almost seemed recreational. That day, she began to suspect that it was catching.

Their landlady paid a short, nasty visit about late rent and left. At once Wellesley chased Clive, both of them silent, out of the living room into the weedy yard. Naomi ran after them. Clive tripped; Wellesley jumped her brother. Rather than hit, scratch or even bite, the girl’s fingers were going for Clive's eyes.

This savagery was new, and great waves of anger swept Naomi. She grabbed her daughter; flung her aside. "Jesus!" Then, kneeling, "Clive, are you hurt?"

She inspected him with her hands, feeling the soft shoulders and legs in his little body, the fragile bones and tender skin. She ran her fingers through his hair. Blood oozed from the back of his neck, as where a lioness kills her prey.

"Oh God, she bit you!"

Titanic fury took hold against a daughter bent on mayhem. "You!" She thrust the girl up with locked elbows and pinned her against the sun, jolting her repeatedly. "You! Are! Nice!" "You do not hurt!" "You do not hurt Clive!" She was shouting. She lowered her voice until it hissed. "You do not hurt! You do not hurt Clive!" She bored into the girl with reddened eyes, determined and dangerous. struggling between fury and a purely civil constraint. Wellesley remained airborne at the end of her mother’s arms. After ages, her rigid body sagged and her animal glare went.

"Let go." It was Clive, pulling at Naomi's jeans with his face filled with tragic mourning. "It's all right," he said. "I’m healing, see?"

Naomi set Wellesley down and goggled, confused but no longer out for blood. Clive went into the shack after his sister. Naomi followed, watching them settle onto the rump-sprung couch in the living room. She got out iodine and bandages, her hands trembling and her stomach heaving. Her whisper was scary with intensity. "You do not hurt one another! And from now on, you talk! You both talk to me whenever you think! You tell me whatever you think!" She rocked back onto her heels, her shaking hands full of bloody cotton balls.

But the twins had made peace. They stared at her, awed; they had never seen her angry, not at them.

"Did Mrs. Davis go home?" Wellesley asked, and peered out the screen door. Her arms where Naomi had clutched her were beginning to bruise. Her voice and diction were those of a woman.

After that day, both children chattered. They sang with perfect pitch and timing. Clive did Elvis imitations with his swiveling crotch. Wellesley copied Cher and tossed her blue-black hair in the bathtub, smoothing it sensuously over her chest and belly. Naomi pitched a fit, sold the TV and bought a tan Datsun station wagon.

Every morning Naomi got the children after work. One day the sitter described the twins' "aunt," a fat blonde in her thirties who wore a dark pant suit with a white, scarf-necked blouse. The man with her was short and had a lisp. They had visited the children at bedtime and asked them questions. Clive has bitten the man’s finger.

"Hunh," Naomi said, not even surprised, and drove home for their things.

She got them, too, and had them into the car and was driving south toward Petaluma at eight when she saw the roadblock and the tan dog at the corner. Two police cars sat nose to nose, incongruous across the residential street. She turned right, right, left, and saw another pair of police cars.

Into an alley, fast. A siren wailed behind her. Down another alley, and a third, faster and beginning to panic. Two more sirens.

A Winchell's Donuts parking lot fed onto the third alley. She spun in, stopped between a pickup and a van with her motor idling. A police car passed on the street but didn't see her. A black sedan followed it. The sedan pulled in. Beyer was driving; he was alone.

He idled past her hood, pulled up next to the donut shop and got out, moving fast, inspecting the interior of the parked cars as he went.

"Get down, kids. Don't say anything." Naomi patted the floor by the passenger seat and rummaged in her purse for a scarf. Clive went first; Wellesley squatted next to him and stared up at her. Naomi wondered whether they read her thoughts the same way she felt their confusion. "You're good kids and I love you. I wish I knew what to do."

Immediately she saw the green candle stub from their first birthday cake, clear as if it were sitting on the dashboard.

"Burn baby!"

Wellesley was staring at her. She hadn't spoken.

"It's all right, love."

"Burn baby!"

"Stay down there, honey. It's a game."

But her voice was tense and she knew she wasn't fooling the twins. Her scarf would not unfold. Clive was always the first to cry and about to start.

"I'll think of something."

"BURN BABY BURN!"

It was as urgent as a shout, and shot through Naomi's veins like a high. The candle's image acquired a wrapping of little, writhing snakes. Naomi stared at her psychic daughter. She smoothed her dark head, then Clive's pale tow.

Beyer was near. The scarf was hopeless, and anyway it was a dumb idea, no disguise at all. Matches? A knife? Flight. She stomped on the accelerator so hard and shifted into low so quickly that the motor died.

Bayer reached the car, friendly and earnest. His hand was stretched palm-up as if toward a suspicious dog. "Miss Bessemew! I'd like a werrd with you!"

Pumping the accelerator, twisting the key, Naomi realized her car was flooded. She let go of the key and lifted her foot. The twins stared at her; at him. They silently conferred.

"Pwease! You know we only want to tock to you. Ask a few questions. Reassure you." His eyes darted toward the street. He had put on a pot belly and acquired gloss. His fluff-dried hair bulged over his ears.

"How are you, Dr. Beyer?" Stupid, but it was something to say. The twins stopped their silent conference and peered at him over her legs.

"Miss Bessemew, I want you to know I wegwet..."

He didn't know what he regretted. He stood beside the open car window, leaning to see in, one casual hand on the door near the lock. His soft fanny would be against the van. Naomi glanced into the rear-view mirror to the alley. Only a pickup going by. Only the tan dog with a sharp muzzle, eyes ahead, trotting behind it. Donut fat reeked over the old, half-forgotten stench. A curl of her hair lifted and fell. The twins willed fire.

"You regret my friend's murder? All those deaths that day on Mission Street?"

Beyer ignored that; he seemed intent on not lisping and was half-successful. "These awe the childwen? Lovely. Growing, too. I could help you..."

"I know."

"Education. Best schools. A permanent home for you all. I've acquiwed..."

"Curiosity, I'll bet. They're the first of your Master Race, aren't they?"

"Master...oh." He half-chuckled and his face withdrew an inch. "I suppose they could be called that. Hewwo, children."

"And clout. That's what you have too, isn't it? Power."

Embarrassed modesty. "Well, I'm not without infwuence." His hand slid an inch toward the door handle. "And believe me, I would use every ounce of it to help you, all for free. Just a few questions, now. You and the childwen."

She saw into Bayer's mind, heard his thoughts and felt his pathetic, deviant excitement: windows and curtains and drapes behind bars; fences, electrical; a wall, padded; a stirruped table with wrist straps, a strapped reclining chair like a dentist's with blinding lights above it, a pink-Disney room, a blue-Disney one, each with miniature strapped tables and chairs.

"BAD! BURN!"

That demonic, furious will exploded from Naomi and released a blood-lusting animal. She screamed, twisted, and with manic force slammed the car door into Bayer's gut. He went down. She dodged around the door and threw herself onto him. He tried to fend her, met teeth on his face and gave up, writhing on his back between her car and the van. She jabbed stiff-fingered into his eyes. Not deeply, not up to her squeamish knuckles, but it was enough to wet her hands.

Bayer squealed long and high, his legs thrashing.

Naomi leapt back into her car and jerked it into life, backing up and following the alley that the dog or coyote had used. Clive and Wellesley relaxed their stare and began playing with a little snake she seemed to recognize, seemed to accept, seemed to remember, seemed to believe in, but didn't have time to consider. All the sirens in the world yelped at her tail. Then, and she didn't know whether to laugh or cry, the yelping sirens crashed, tinkled, faded: stopped.

PART TWO

Sixteen

Naomi ran out of money in Flagstaff, Arizona. Flagstaff has a university and serves five Native American tribes, but is closest to the western Navajo reservation. It has a lot of foreign grad students who need someone to English their theses and dissertations. Naomi had a knack for it. She posted notes on campus and began typing on her portable in her motel room. Right away, it became a profitable business. Within a month she rented a desk in a real estate office.

She was not bothered by pursuit. No unremarkable sedans followed her, no ultra-clean men loitered in parking lots. She ordered a business phone, and there were no dead echoes along the line. Her interior demon dozed, then slept.

Across the street from the office was a news stand that carried The Chronicle. A banner on the Sunday edition blared:

PEACE OR PEAKSPORE?

BAYER'S SINGULAR VISION

(see Section C-1)

She picked up a copy.

"Bad stuff," opined the store's proprietor.

"That's what they say. Give me this one."

She opened the paper to Section C-1 and read where she stood, blocking the narrow aisle by the cash register and ignoring the bored twins. The article mourned Beyer's one-eyed state without apologizing for the pun in the headline and pictured him with an eyepatch. His pioneering work for peace would continue after a time of convalescence.

But his weapon was de trop. The article described the failed Peakspore that Naomi had written about under the YWCA's scratchy blanket. Gone was the miracle spray that would convert the enemy to the side of decency. Graduate assistants from Bayer's laboratory, exposed to nothing worse than an accumulation of Peakspore's escaping fumes, were sometimes psychic, more often psychotic. One had committed suicide from the campanile. According to an unnamed but "highly placed" source in the Pentagon, the second generation of Peakspore animals, its genetic makeup altered by the stuff, was "distressingly" prone to self-immolation. The third-generation offspring were as vicious as wolverines. And to think, the piece editorialized, that the Pentagon had considered the compound's unrestricted application....

Naomi snorted. An adolescent boy sidled toward the girlie magazines behind her. The proprietor coughed, she lifted her head, and the boy backed off, his sex education delayed.

In returning to the article about Peakspore, Naomi noticed a sidebar. "The Strange Case of Naomi Bessemer" ran the header, and was followed by discretely phrased questions‒most, she gleefully noted, from the anonymous diatribes she'd mailed to the press over the years.

First, the mystery surrounding her case remained; there were no corroborating witnesses to her purported crimes, no positive identification of either her or her cohorts, and not even a fingerprint. Mysterious, wasn't it? Why exactly did the FBI, or was it the Pentagon, snigger-snigger, want her?

Second, and amazingly to Naomi, why had the spunky urban guerilla, now sought by every member of NATO, been given asylum in Albania? Was it a show of humane solidarity with the American Left? or propaganda to bolster its position within the communist bloc?

She whirled away from the cash register, grinning so hard it hurt. This was great. This was bliss: perfection.

In front of her a Guccioni publication flaunted unsubtly posed flesh which she didn't begin to see. She lifted the fascinating newspaper and read on.

Ironically, Bessemer the expatriate had barely eluded hot pursuit by the FBI only months before. This was only possible with the collusion of her revolutionary gang. The members were everywhere; they had made it possible to "successfully evade apprehension since the inception of her enforced career."

Naomi reasoned: If she were in Albania, no one would look for her in the US, right? At least for a few months' worth of breathing time. Maybe...

She grinned toward the girlie magazine. This was dazzling; she was worth a side bar, period. And even that peripheral story was incorrect, mistaken, wrong, stupidly wrong, but carrying with it the full weight and influence of one of the nation's major newspapers. Gloating, she dragged the kids across the street to a pastry shop that sold cappuccino and bought herself a double, by turns staring out the window and grinning. The kids each got a Spider Man comic and a whole apricot danish.

"Albania!" she muttered, and shook her head.

She leased a log house hidden in the woods well out of town. She explored the mountains and forests. She subscribed to the Navajo Times and looked for Dustin's name, not certain whether he still lived, or if living, whether he would have returned to the reservation.

She found him in a photo feature. He stood among "super-sheep" that were big, yellowish, long-haired, curly-horned, and were said to be intelligent. They always bore twins.

Behind Dustin on Grey Mesa stood a fancy A-frame home of logs and glass. He was Dustin Begay, now; a breeder, a political comer along Kaibito Wash.

Naomi smelled Peakspore and coyote, and felt her heart sink into her brand-new boots.

Seventeen

June 2, 1972 Dear Dustin, moan share: When last we said goodbye in San Francisco I took nearly a year to deliver the

Dear Dustin: I hope you remember me; I run a typing service in Flagstaff. Your telephone number is listed under Begay, but I don't want to

Dear Dustin: Must see you, discuss unclaimed gifts, SF Indian Center 1965. See history stacks, Tuba City rental library June 23, noonish. The San Francisco press.

Tuba City in 1972 featured a fly-blown, one-pump gas station and minimart as you entered from the south. About thirty miles northeast from Cameron, the town was an administrative center and trading post-cum-tourist trap. Tuba, which Tuba City was called thereabouts, sits above Moenkopi Wash, which dribbles or rushes toward the Little Colorado River depending on the weather. The Tuba City rental library was part of the living room in an Anglo woman's yellow plaster home. Wall-to-wall carpet, flowered pull-drapes, color television beside the two tall bookcases that held the entire collection. All of the books were printed in English. Most of the stories were Biblical. Naomi left and waited for Dustin in her tan station wagon.

The uphill street was unpaved, wide and reddish. It sloped toward her as an unimproved section of a bald rise of ground. Shacks sat at angles to plumb and straggled past her to the gas station. The Anglo's level, unspotted house constituted civic blight.

It was hot. Naomi fretted about the twins, alone with a sitter on a weekend. She wondered whether she would get home on time, and whether her new typist would finish the stacked-up work. Whether the tribal police could give her a ticket for parking here too long. Whether Dustin would come. A passing station wagon with an official emblem on the door passed, paused, parked just ahead. The driver inspected her through his rear-view mirror, then drove on.

Scared now, she began to rationalize. The long drive to Tuba wasn't as far from Grey Mesa as the ones he must often make to sell sheep-sperm. And sheep-shearing time was past, if those were his in the picture, and if he didn't shear them, it couldn't be, it mustn't be butchering time or market time or whatever kept him busy. He had two children who needed a daddy. She needed someone who knew about Peakspore, because his children suffered from its effects. He had to come.

The heat built. Pickups with gun racks boiled the dust. Men with turquoise bolos and black Stetsons walked past. A fly settled on her wrist, then fled. Naomi told herself she didn't talk to animals, that she had not become passive, and that fear didn't make her imitate people in order to become invisible.

She walked down to the gas station and bought a bottle of tepid Coke from the machine, then headed back. The sunlight was blinding. She concentrated on stepping into the far-apart tracks her boots had made going downhill.

A white pickup passed. Clean, very clean above the red, tire-sprayed mud on the door.

"Dustin!"

She waved her arms. Coke sprayed. Manyblades stopped and backed up to her as his passenger window slid down.

"I thought you were a squaw," he said flatly. He spoke with the unemphatic rhythm of his tribe.

Her grin disappeared. "We have children," she told him.

"I guessed."

"That's my Datsun." She nodded toward it, self-consciously holding her lips still, because Navajos were supposed to point with their mouth. "Can we go somewhere private?"

"Follow me."

He made a U-turn and headed south toward Highway 264 as she sprinted for her car. She followed him east past Moenkopi, hunkered into its wash, then south again along a dirt track. He seemed unfriendly. She tried to study the set of his head from behind. .

Naomi never saw an uncluttered horizon without relief bordering on elation. This time it brought no joy. Later, she looked on her map and decided they drove across Ward Terrace, a falling landscape of eerie rock piers bulging with ancient stories about seas and time and changing geology. Beyond the terrace, they mounted a tilted mesa spotted with sage and scabs of hardpan where the dirt had been blown off. There was no road; they just drove until they overlooked the west end of the Painted Desert.

She got out and followed Dustin to a sandstone platform. If you squinted and knew where it was, you could see the hollow that held Leupp Station and, farther east, a smudge in the sky that meant Winslow. There were no roads or poles or wires; no people; lots of sky.

Dustin hadn't aged, but he had become a dignified presence, a personage. His hair was in a bun. He wore expensive, unadorned boots. For some reason, the fact that she looked the same too, just as young, didn't matter.

They sat. He faced Leupp Station, avoiding her eyes.

"Why haven't you let me know?" he demanded. One hand dangled from his raised knee and toyed with a long jacknife.

Naomi's defensive hackles rose. "How?" Her voice was thinned by the huge sky. "I didn't know you were alive. You were barely able to walk when your militant friend threw me to the Feds."

The knife, closed but a menace anyhow, flickered, swinging from the little ring at one end.

"You found me now."

She glanced toward Leupp, toward the San Francisco Peaks, to her own cheap, scratched boots. Patience and Sweet Reason, she told herself, but said, "And you're lucky I did. Your picture was in one issue of a piss-ant paper no one reads except Indians and Wannabes. One of my customers forgot it, or you still wouldn't know."

"And you're a felon."

He had barely waited for her to finish before he said it. And that apparently was the explanation for his attitude. Another view of herself entered her protesting skull.

"Is that why you're like this? Because the papers claimed I had a gang? Because I quote-attacked-end quote and blinded Bayer?"

"He's one-eyed, isn't he?"

She stood up, no longer irritated or defensive, but angry. "For God's sake, put away that stupid knife," He ignored her. "Listen. The newspapers also report that I'm in Albania, which is just as unlikely for an Anglo mathematician's milk-fed daughter as that I have a guerilla gang working for me to overthrow the government." He began to listen. "You are part of my gang. You aided and abetted me, and got shot doing it. You and a weird stranger with a social conscience, whom I haven't seen in years, are my entire band of urban guerillas." She couldn't tell from his expression whether it sank in. "And yes, Bayer is one-eyed. He and his government goons were about to put the kids and me into separate padded cells. With special diets for us, and special sleep cycles, and..."

"So you poked out his eye."

"God damn it! I reacted! I didn't want them to separate our little kids from their mother. From me. I didn't want them to strap our five-year-old daughter onto a gynecology couch!"

Dustin's face puckered with, finally, satisfying revulsion. "Where have you been?" he demanded.

Her anger was escalating toward something worse, and that would not do; she turned toward her car. "This is a mistake. I shouldn't have written to you."

"Maybe you should have done it earlier."

He was too near; he had risen and followed her so closely that she felt the warmth of his chest on her back. She whirled, ready to defend or attack. The little knife was gone. She walked on to a stand of mesquite, telling herself to be calm.

The land sloped in to the plain from another bluff. A wash at the bottom of the slope wound away and entered the Little Colorado riverbed. To the south, it met the heights of black lava below Sunset Crater. The whole landscape funneled toward the inadequate, stony throat at her feet.

"So how?" she began. "How was I to ask for your help? How was I supposed to look for you, with photos of me hanging in every post office? Or when I pretended to be a wet-back so I could get work? Was I supposed to be smart? Was I supposed to know you would want children? Could I guess you'd give up your whole academic life and come back to the reservation?"

Her throat was loosening. A wistful note crept into her voice. "Sure, I thought about it. Besides wanting to let you know about Clive and Wellesley, I wanted to see you and know how you are. But when all you have is a couple of weird kids and a temporary identity, you forget your options. And when the Feds keep finding you and you have to run again...oh, crap. Forget it." A breeze flowed north and dabbed at her burning face. "I thought...I don't know what I thought."

"Oh."

She turned around. Dustin was studying the toes of his fancy boots, his thumbs still in his belt. "I didn't realize," he said. "I guess I didn't think."

Naomi softened. "Yeah. But you've had things on your mind, too. It can't be easy at this altitude with your lung messed up."

"No." He glanced at her, then back at his boots. "I mean, yes; it's easy."

Peakspore's magical effects; of course. There was a sizeable pause.

She said, "I heal fast, too. Anyway, as things went on I burned out. So after that hellacious scene with Bayer, I took our food money and drove to Flagstaff. On a hunch."

"I see."

"And we have two pre-schoolers." He nodded and scanned the scenery. Naomi handed him a packet from her pants pocket. "I brought pictures."

"Thanks."

He squatted onto the hardpan and looked at each snapshot. They pleased him; she relaxed. About Wellesley he said little because there was little to say; she was his female replica. But he snorted at Clive's blondness. "How did that happen?"

"My mom."

He shuffled backward through the slippery pack for an earlier view of his son. "He'll be hard to explain, except he has my squinchy little eyes." He glanced up at Naomi. "I'll come and meet them. Where do you live?"

Her tension returned. Naomi wouldn't wedge this man's suspicion into her new, peaceful life.

"I'll bring them to Cameron Station."

He stood and hooked his thumbs back into his belt, looking down at her from very close up. "Naomi, why are the children never mentioned in the news? Why haven't Jim Bayer and the FBI mentioned them to the press? Because they want them. They want to own them. Remember?"

"Yes. Of course."

"So they want you to relax. They salt the news with false reports about you." She could have sunk into the stone. "They want to perform their tests in secret. You didn't think of that."

"No."

"The children are still in danger; and although you've managed so far, until you are fully prescient, and my irony is intended, I'm going to raise the children along with you. And that's a fact. Now, where do you live?"

Years of coping with red-neck bullies had made Naomi an adept. She wandered away and Dustin followed. When she stopped on rising ground her eyes were level with his. "You are?" she asked, "The man who used to work for the Pentagon?"

"That's why you looked me up, because you want me to."

"Not unless you're still the good person I nursed in San Francisco."

He spun away. "I can help, or I can take the children."

"Try it."

He turned back and stared with concentrated threat. Naomi stared back, unfazed. It was Dustin who broke eye contact.

After that, their talk became easier and, finally, positive. Naomi knew Dustin tried to read her just as she tried to read him.

As the father, and using his new identity to ensure their anonymity, he would register the twins with the tribe. Among other advantages, that would guarantee medical care if he or Naomi were caught. He would get them examined. Yes, the hospital at Tuba could do the whole work-up, even brain scans. If Naomi agreed, and the children accepted Dustin, they could spend vacations with him. His conservative mother would teach them to speak Navajo. If things went right, they could learn stock-raising and reservation politics. He could offer them a future. He even abandoned his heavy tribal accent in his eagerness to persuade her.

But Naomi had doubts. She said, "I may have to run again. I mean, if the FBI shows up."

"If you have to take the children, I'll come too."

Naomi was mollified. But she only gave him her business address, and her new name; Jeannie Walsh.

The breeze became a wind that mooned across the sandstone, tossing an occasional grain. Naomi watched the Coconino Plateau beyond the next mesa hump its downhill way from the Grand Canyon. The sun westered and sent white veils from the San Francisco peaks. Far south, sharp and clear in the dry air, a small animal moved along the base of the bluff with its tail down. It stopped at a lone cottonwood.

Later, the main thing Naomi remembered about Dustin was his delight in fatherhood and in his ability to spoil the children. She felt nothing from him about herself, except impartial friendliness and personal distaste for her Anglo attitudes; nothing of what she'd hoped.

"Look, Dustin," she said before they left, "all my niceness disappeared the day you were shot and my friend was murdered for helping me." He didn't answer. He didn't look at her. "How do you get to that wash down there?"

"What wash?"

"The one with Coyote."

"Overland from Gray Mountain."

Eighteen

So Wellesley and Clive got a father.

"My father?" Clive wondered, puzzlement and tentative pleasure crossing his small face.

Naomi brushed his blond hair back from his eyes. "Yes, love. Wouldn't you like to know him?"

He glanced at Wellesley. His sister stood at his shoulder and glared levelly at her mother in patent disbelief that this was not her only parent. "We don't know," she said. "Where has he been?"

They were introduced on the telephone. Naomi listened on the kitchen extension and was pleased that it went well. Afterward, Clive asked her, "Why does he think about you, but not say what he thinks?"

"What do you mean?" she asked, "What is he thinking about?"

"Rabbits and baby sheep."

"And coyotes," Wellesley added. "He should say whatever he thinks, shouldn't he?"

Perhaps the talk hadn't gone that well.

Nineteen

An outsized propane tank came with the cabin, downslope from it and partly hidden by a clump of mountain mahogany. One Saturday a new delivery man showed up. As the pump did its work, he talked with the twins, amiable, his hands in his rear jeans pockets. Alert as always to strangers, Naomi watched from a kitchen window. He was lean, muscled, of medium height. It looked like he had no eyebrows.

The children talked, smiled and gestured with more animation than usual. They even laughed. The man squatted and drew in the dirt with a finger. Wellesley was fascinated. She added to the scratches. Clive, smiling, stooped to see better. Then he stopped smiling and said something to his sister.

The tank must have been filled, because the man straightened and retrieved the hose. He waved as he drove off. The twins waved back and wandered uphill, into the small meadow they preferred for playing.

When Naomi got the time to inspect the scratches in the dirt (secretly, although wondering why Wellesley and Clive shouldn't know it), all she found was a series of esses.

Twenty

Dustin saw his children before they knew he was there. The stranger-father protested their incipient violence. Naomi denied it and felt foolish as she did.

"Have they been playing with other children?" Dustin asked.

Naomi crossed her arms over her chest. "Of course. They've been in day care while I work."

"Any violence?"

"Not against other kids."

"Against one another, then."

She paused. "They spat, like normal children."

He shook his head. "No."

"Yes," Naomi protested. "I'm not saying they don't have tempers; but they stopped hurting one another. I just had to tell them once." Dustin's flat glare accused her of holding back. "They're normal! They're big, they're precocious, and their muscular acuity is amazing, but at bottom they're just good, lovable kids."

"Look at them, Naomi."

"It's Jeannie! Please!"

The twins, by the mountain mahogany, crawled toward one another, darted, dashed apart. No laughter. No sound.

"They're stalking each other."

"It's just pretend. They pretend they'll die if they really get caught."

"And Wellesley has a knife."

Naomi looked again. A butter knife glinted in the girl's hand. It squirmed.

Squirmed?

Naomi, tranced by illusion or denial, recited her favorite fairy tale about her outlandish children. She sounded more and more like a social worker: "What worries me isn't the twins' resemblance to the test animals, Dustin, it's their‒biddability. And they're so sensitive. To people, I mean. I never have to tell them twice about behavior or manners, because they're so eager to please me. When they want something, of course I know it because I'm their mother. But they're the same about me; they always know how I feel. It's almost spooky." She ventured an indulgent chuckle. "Of course I'm concerned about it. I'm concerned because I don't know what their disturbed upbringing has done to their social adjustment or their developing self-image. They need the security of a home. They need a normal childhood."

"What are you not seeing, Na‒Jeannie? The fact that they're so thin? Their jerky eye movements? The strain on their faces?"

She tightened the belt of her dress, sat on the woodpile, smoothed her lap, crossed her knees and flexed an ankle.

"The question is, how do you expect the children to be affected?" She had only meant to counter Dustin, but her question brought an ugly, infuriating insight. "You're afraid!" Dustin didn't answer. "Peakspore! You stole the recipe from the lab! You use it now to make your supersheep, those cold-resistant, draught-resistant, eat-anything giant sheep! They go crazy and kill each other, and now you're afraid! Because it's going to kill Wellesley and Clive!"

Dustin caught her flailing fists before they struck. "No!" His eyes had her own mad, red-lit glare.

She lowered her shoulders and breathed. "Let me go," she said. "It's the Peakspore, Dustin. Let me go. Our feelings feed off each other and they loop. They escalate."

He released her by inches. "Don't make me angry, Naomi," he warned her.

She backed away. "Goes double here Dustin, and I'm sneakier than you are."

"All right."

Breathing time. Naomi continued. "But you know what I mean. You haven't been around other Peakspore humans, so you don't recognize..."

He cut her off, now the professional scientist. "I worked with it, Jeannie. Probably nothing is physically wrong with Wellesley and Clive. Our children may be neurotic or violent, but that's treatable. I don't worry about their genetics. They simply can't respond the way the lab animals did, because we didn't get a full dose."

After what had just nearly happened, Naomi doubted his judgment. But she nodded, avoiding the power that remained in his eyes. He repeated: "Our children's problems are treatable." She nodded again. He said, "Listen. Even before your accident in our lab, I knew Peakspore was flawed. And with Bayer's inflated ego, there was no telling what he might do to get attention. So I took the paper documentation when you were exposed; reams of it. I even got rid of some of the Peakspore after you left, the reserve supply."

"You did? That really was you?"

He nodded. "When I got to mom's place on the Rez I couldn't match the facilities we had at Berkeley. But I did what I could, and it was more than you might expect. Without classes to teach or prepare for, and with the grant-writing business out of the loop, I had quantities of time." He glanced at the twins. "At first I bred Peakspore animals, sure. Only at first, though. For the later experiments I altered the compound, then just started over from scratch. The experiments are finished. Now my sweet-tempered sheep bear gentle lambs." Naomi nodded again. "It's true. They could be house pets."

"But you have the chemical at your place," she claimed.

"No."

He didn't sound like a liar, but she didn’t believe him and was afraid to say so. "Children!" she called.

Wellesley heard the residual worry in her voice. She turned toward the porch with the look of a concerned adult. "Yes, mom?"

Anything to restore normalcy; watching Wellesley approach, Naomi said, in an ordinary tone, "I wonder how the affair affected Bayer's family? His son?"

"Last I heard, he was raising the boy alone. His wife left him for another woman."

Twenty-one

Naomi fretted because the Pentagon would always pursue her. Despite her meetings with him (Dustin's behavior toward the twins always shone with a sober paternal delight), she suspected Manyblades of being in cahoots with the military; of monitoring the twins while providing a somewhat normal life for the logistically precious subjects.

He phoned the cabin each Wednesday and Sunday. He got their physical exams (growing awfully fast, but with a perfectly healthy pituitary; blame the genes for their growth) and arranged for counseling with a psychologist in town. Naomi’s paranoia abated and she became a social animal again.

He bought her the cabin, added bedrooms, dressing rooms and playrooms until it sprawled acros the hilly slope like a crazed spider. He charged the children's clothes at Babbitt's, Flagstaff's premiere department store. The clerk recognized him and smiled. Naomi was impressed; she was used to dealing in cash at second-hand stores. "You'll have to replace those outfits next month," she teased him, because she knew the twins' growth rate. The gaudy outfits erased the twins' final doubts about their father.

Naomi had a talk with their future principal about precocity when she enrolled them for school. The night before their first school day, and guessing that it was unnecessary, Naomi explained the concept of education to her children.

They were at the dining table. Long kitchen, red serape curtains, red tablecloth, white walls, black floor. Their round oak table sat in an outward jog of little windows that gave onto dusk and the small meadow.

"Will it be like our other schools?" Wellesley wanted to know.

"No, love, this will be new learning for you both."

Six-year-old Clive was boning a pork chop. "What?" he asked.

"Learning what? Well, the teachers have to find out how much you already know, so at first..."

"We already read and do multiplication, mother. School will interfere."

He was dead serious, and correct, but once in school both the twins gave it a real try. For the first week they sat when told, played when told, and brought home their finger paintings. The paintings were black and red, with sophisticated balance that was achieved by finicky use of the white background. They looked like aimless blobs unless you knew rat anatomy up close, and were looking for it. Naomi didn't, and wasn't. Neither were the teachers.

The second week, the twins disappeared. The principal called Naomi's office. Naomi had visions of an FBI kidnap; she dashed. But Wellesley and Clive had been out of sight on the library floor, reading eighth-grade biology textbooks.

"Hi, mom," they greeted her, and simultaneously climbed down from chairs at the principal's desk. They were smiling, miniature adults pleased to see an acquaintance. They were imitating the principal.

Naomi embraced them and reestablished the mother-child bond with an eyeball-to-eyeball stare. She didn't remember when she had begun to do it.

The principal ordered a batch of tests. The twins taught themselves as they were tested. Somewhere at the ninth-grade level they met a challenge. By Christmas, the principal agreed that they could attend school with their peers in age, but study independently with a tutor in the library. The twins agreed to attend because they could learn advanced algebra and study anatomy.

No problem.

Twenty-two

Dustin, still concerned and indulgent, took the twins over Easter vacation. It was a nervous time for Naomi, but they called her each evening full of their adventures, bucolic and trite, and after a while she began to relax. But also, it was her first time without them. Bored, she moved her business to a downtown hotel. Big windows on all four walls gave a view of two streets, the hotel lobby, and an entry hall. There was a lot of foot traffic, and space for the third typist she already needed. She was still bored.

One evening she decided to find the coyote's bluff by the Little Colorado. The beauty of the loping grassland in early spring enchanted her. She met a herd of pronghorns that disappeared like smoke. She sketched lava beds above Shit Pot Crater and collected potsherds between patches of melting snow. Where she dug, a ball of yellow gopher snakes slept and stank under a red Sinagua pit house. At ground level, a jackrabbit stood on its hind legs with its ears erect and its nose twitching to catch her smell. The piñon behind him was so dark it looked black.

A horse snorted; a saddle creaked. Startled, she whirled and stammered, "Oh! Sorry, am I trespassing? Is this part of the park? Or the reservation?"

The man was already within touching distance. "Nope, I was just surprised to see anyone out here." He studied her with his forearm on the pommel of his saddle. Square bangs over a broad Hopi face. Expensive quarter horse.

"Oh."

"That your car up on the ridge?"

She glanced at it guiltily. "Yes."

"It's right on the Wupatki Park boundary. If you were digging up those snakes any closer to it, you'd be in trouble. But you're well off federal land down here."

"I thought so."

"So digging here isn't exactly against the law."

"That's what I thought."

"I guess I can't cite you for anything."

He straightened so Naomi could see the badge on his khaki shirt and the loom of an open holster at each hip. The move was calculated and scary.

"Couple of coyotes were marking your tires," he said.

"On my car?"

"I guess it's theirs, now."

Her throat closed against the onslaught of the familiar stench. She tried to smile. "That's what I hear."

A dark snake slithered from behind the man's horse without spooking it, and came to rest at the base of a stone outcrop. The man rode off and she was reminded of the set of someone's shoulders, the angle of a head cocked on a short neck.

Twenty-three

Early in summer she delivered the children to Dustin's and saw his home for the first time. The drive from Flagstaff led up Highway 160 to low bluffs and Elephant Feet, a matched set of gray dirt pillars with erosion that formed knees and even toes. From there, a dirt road meandered northwest to Route 98 and stopped. It was another twenty washboard miles from the highway to Dustin's house. Tasi Skizzy, dark and proctologic beyond Kaibito Wash, fingered the sky through her windshield all the way.

Dustin's big A-frame had glittering window-walls facing east and west. It rested against a rock knob covered by sagebrush and a whiny wind. There were guest wings north and south. Behind it all of the outbuildings, pens and fences, were white. Water in The Arm, a drowned canyon leading into the southern shore of Lake Powell, glittered alternately like polished flint or turquoise. Dustin's launch bobbed beside a pier. He was rich.

Grace, Dustin's mother, was a wild contrast to her son's modernist installation. She was wrinkled, sharp-tongued, and in all things a conservative Navajo matriarch. She had never paid a mortgage or utility bill or seen the inside of a supermarket. She was even shorter than Naomi, with a dumpling figure and a repoussé nose so extreme that it had no bridge. Her small eyes were flat as granite and would not meet Naomi's.

But she accepted her outsized grandchildren, and Wellesley and Clive already loved her from their visit in the spring. They spoke simple Navajo with her. They followed her like ducklings and nested atop her gathered skirt when she sat.

"Be still! Be good! I'll call Coyote to get you."

"Do you know how to bring him, Grandma?"

"Half-breeds," she sniffed, and folded her arms across wide breasts to stare at Naomi's belt. "You Anglos think being smart is the same as being good." The twins giggled and behaved.

Dustin had bought them ponies, so Naomi was irrelevant and would leave after an early supper, all right late lunch if you want to call it that, thanks. Was it all right if she stretched her legs first? And Dustin was the expansive host, sure, make yourself at home, you'll hear the dinner bell.

There were corrals and a stable, cages, pens, a barn full of cars, trucks and their paraphernalia, a laboratory with a white-robed helper, a bunkhouse with a pool table in its common room, a boathouse with tools and hanging lifejackets. There was no Peakspore. She couldn't even smell it.

Back in the main house, the adults ate from trays by the dark fireplace and listened to Christian radio. News was read in alternating Navajo and English, slanted toward forbearance and love. Naomi was embarrassed for whitey, the belagaana, then bored.

Without preamble she asked Dustin, "What does the FBI have to say?" Dustin shifted on his leather couch. She went on: "Because you said you'd check, and there've been a couple of incidents. Just asking, really, but you said you'd call."

He slid a look toward his mother; apparently Grace was not privy to his dealings with the belagaana.

"Incidents?"

"They're probably nothing. It's just, well, I've run into this policeman a couple of times, and it seems like he's following me. Well, not a policeman really, a ranger at Wupatki ruins. A Hopi. He wears a badge and two guns, and they look odd; twin barrels, extra-long."

"In town?"

"No, of course not; he doesn't wear them in town. But I've run into him there too, without his guns that is, and I thought..."

Grace was so avid to hear Naomi's sensational business that she deigned to glance her way, then picked lint from the arm of her velveteen sleeve. The radio droned on.

Naomi thought she heard concern in Dustin's voice: "Are you frightened?"

"I don't know; I just don't trust people who wear guns like that, I mean two of them, one on each hip. Are park rangers even supposed to wear guns? And then there are notes in my office when I open up; they're shoved under the door. He wants to talk to me."

"What is his name?" Dustin asked.

"The notes just say 'Ranger Rick.' Corny, isn't it?" Her head bobbed up and down when she asked, urging agreement.

"Too corny for even a Hopi," Dustin half-grinned. "No wonder you're frightened."

"I'm not frightened..."

"Concerned. Those could be twin sawed-off shotguns." He glanced at Grace again, but he expanded. "Yes, I checked. There are no enquiries and there doesn’t even seem to be a lot of interest anymore. Of course, there is a lot of gossip about Jim..."

Dustin set his enamelware plate on an end table and studied Naomi. His look excited her. Despite the other sort of tension between them, it usually did. She blushed.

"I've never heard of an armed park ranger," she said.

"I believe it depends on the park, but I'll check that, too." He leaned toward her and gave a phony, encouraging smile as he tapped her knee. "But now I think of it, it's probably all right."

"What do you mean?"

"It sounds like you have an admirer."

Embarrassed silence followed. Dustin said, "Speaking of Hopis, an old friend of mine showed up this week; I think you should..."

Naomi wasn't listening. With a gut-lurch she conclusively recognized the man she had seen at the pithouse. He had been in the hotel coffee shop by her office and outside the Flagstaff Indian Center, even waiting by the schoolyard gate. Sean. Sean Colum was here, disguised by Hopi bangs, and he was stalking her. She couldn't tell Dustin, who was made uncomfortable by doing her even small favors.

Anyhow, what would she tell him? That her only other "gang member", a man she'd met three, maybe four hellish times, had reappeared? That she sensed he was homicidal? That he probably wanted something from her? That it would undoubtedly be expensive? Continual watchfulness was no longer possible; she was stretched too thin and if she had to begin that life again she would snap.

Dustin was saying "...Telly, you may remember..."

"Excuse me. Something I ate..." Naomi sped to the bathroom to vomit, to swear, to collect herself. Then she roused the twins and said goodbye. Grace stood beside her son in the double front doorway and scowled at Naomi's slender, purposive bustle.

"Call me if you want anything," Naomi told the children as she hugged them. "At the office, or at home. Any time. I'll call you every other day. Okay?"

"Sure, mom."

"Yes, mom."

She headed for her station wagon, miffed at Grace's prejudice, hating her own awkwardness with Dustin. She had her keys in her hand and the driver's door open when she got the nerve to stop. Keeping her Anglo chin up where it belonged, she strode back to the door and hugged the astonished matriarch. She kissed her soundly on both soft cheeks and hugged her some more until she felt the plump hands reluctantly pat her back.

"Mother Grace, thank you for accepting my children," she said. "You are very kind."

Grace's eyes widened. Dustin's back was to her; his shoulders were shaking.

Twenty-four

Flagstaff is a small town blessed with good restaurants, art, culture, and the Lowell Observatory where Pluto was discovered. Reservations surround it with exotic trading posts for tourists, and Native Americans read metaphysical poetry at cocktail parties. Naomi force-fed the twins with culture. She and Wanda, her first typist and by now her friend, ignored it all in favor of pizza and movies.

Wanda was mostly Navajo, skinny-sexy and flat-out in everything she did. Her mobile face was beginning to wrinkle, outlining the breadth of her cheekbones and the point of her chin.

A week after Naomi left Dustin's, the women ate dinner in a booth at Pizza Hut.

"Men?" Wanda asked, and squinted at Naomi to be certain she was serious. "Sure, in the plural, but serial monogamy's too predictable."

"I haven't decided about it," Naomi said, "Marriage, that is; not sex. But I'm glad Ranger Rick is out of my hair for a while. They arrested him for impersonating a fed, did I tell you? I knew he wasn't a real ranger."

Wanda snorted. "You thought a Hopi was an Irishman? Stalking you?"

"Yeah, and I still think so. He looks and acts just like someone I used to know, and..." She failed to elaborate on her past; she always did. "I thought Dustin would never listen to me, the stiff way he treats me. But he got right on it, and then the cops actually listened to him."

"Maybe Dustin's still sweet on you," Wanda said. She watched Naomi for a reaction. She got nothing. "I've been married three times, and if I knew then what I know now..." She got caught in strings of cheese She tore a strand with her bony finger and wound it around her fork.

Naomi tipped half a pack of Cremora onto her coffee. "Yeah yeah yeah. We're brain-washed to be housewives."

"Maybe you were brainwashed, white girl," Wanda said. "My people invented women's lib. Good thing, too. My father got killed when I was six and mom had to cope."

"Oh? I'm sorry. How did it happen?"

Wanda expressed ecstasy with her mouth full; fluttery hands, popping eyes. "Landslide at the mine," she finally said. "The pit caved in on him. If you can believe it."

Naomi dusted more creamer onto her coffee to watch it sink. "Do you remember him?"

Wanda grinned. "Sure. Stop playing with your drink."

"Hush! I'm having a nice time. What do you remember?"

"Well, he used to always catch us when we did something wrong."

"How?"

"He'd line us kids up in a row, then he'd pull a rock out of his pants pocket. 'You all know this magic rock,' he'd say. 'Whoever stole that quarter, when I throw this rock, it's gonna hit you.' Then he'd wind up real good to throw. Never failed."

"What do you mean?"

Wanda turned back to her meal. "Whoever stole the quarter broke and ran. He had us all believing in that magic rock."

Naomi spewed coffee into her salad. "No chit?"

"No chit. Here; I brought a coupon for a free coke."

Naomi shook her head, still fighting laughter. "Tough act to follow," she finally said.

"Right. So I'm married and divorced three times. Sure you don't want this coupon?"

"Sure."

They watched the setting sun build a double rainbow east of town. It was as bright as neon, propped by the dark forest against a sky black with a dying summer monsoon.

After a while Wanda asked, "What do you think about this Dr. Bayer thing?"

Naomi angled her mug back onto its same wet ring. "What thing? What Dr. Bayer?"

"Dr. E. James Bayer, the father of that peace gas that turned out to make you crazy. I told you; he grew up in Winslow. He went to school here at NAU, everybody in town knows him. Cornelius, his half-brother? still runs the ranch. Remember now?"

"Oh yeah; right. The stuff turned animals into killers. They wanted to turn the Russians into animals."

"Dr. Bayer's the one who invented it, him and some redskin genius. The Indian got killed."

"Hunh. Why is it news now?"

"Dr. Beyer's suing the Pentagon for slavery, and the paper says he might win."

"Slavery?"

"Yeah. They won't admit it, but that gas really turned them on. In this article Bayer says right after that stuff was stolen, they built him some laboratory and wouldn't let him out. Made him work on the gas. He says he sneaked his little boy to his brother because the Feds wanted the kid, too."

"Wanted the kid? What for?"

"Experiments, probably. They think Dr. Bayer smelled enough of his own gas to pass it on to his son. It does that. You know, goes into your DNA."

"Wow." Naomi wiped her sweating palms on her jeans and reached again for her coffee.

"Yeah. He wasn't really all there to begin with, I guess, so he went more and more crazy. The government didn't let loose of him until it was too late, and now with just one eye he'll never be the same. Oh, I guess he's not crazy-crazy, know what I mean? He just can't concentrate long enough to work. At least, that's what he says. And I guess he's a little funny to talk to."

Privately smirking and ashamed of it, "Probably."

"He's back in Winslow."

Guarded now, calculating fast and praying a little, "He is?"

"That's where his brother lives. Cornelius. With his little boy." Wanda checked the clock over the service counter. "You better finish up if you're coming with me."

"Almost done."

"I'm not missing any Marcello Mastroianni."

"Right."

Twenty-five

Naomi reasoned: Winslow was a small town; it could offer the bare necessities, a highway patrol office and a small clinic, but this side of Phoenix, only Flagstaff had all the amenities. Therefore Bayer, staying in the next town east of her and the twins, might pass the glass-walled office at any time and recognize her. Also, Sean would be released and resume stalking her for perverted reasons of his own. So after Wanda's news, Naomi didn't get a lot of sleep because her ears were full of fearful voices, and everything stank, and a whole tribe of coyotes seemed to have adopted the meadow below her cabin.

On the third day of bladder-clutching jitters her old nerve returned in a sort of rebellion against fear. She had just dropped the twins at school and was headed for her office. "To hell with it," she declared to her windshield, "I'm going to the jail and face Sean. Then I'm going to Winslow and see where Bayer lives, and find out how crazy he is." It made her feel so much better she started to hum.

But Sean Colum was not in jail, no one in that gray concrete maze had ever heard his accent or his name, and no one had heard of Ira Telesveya, which was the name he apparently used, and that she had from the article in the Flagstaff Daily Sun.

Naomi was mystified, then angry, then determined to find him. She stomped next door to the courthouse, sought upstairs for the Clerk of the Court, waved the news article and was directed to the judge's chambers. His secretary was in; his honor was not. His secretary's office was so small and her desk was so near the door jamb that Naomi didn't fully open the door. Instead, she stood halfway into the room and held the door open while she asked her questions, lest someone bang it into her from behind.

"Telesveya; Telesveya," the secretary murmured as her pudgy finger traced the column of names on the appropriate docket. Then, lifting her eyes, "let me see that article again." She reached; Naomi once more pulled the thing out of her purse.

"You might try Colum, Sean C-o-l-u-m," she offered hopefully.

The secretary was busy reading. "Noooo, I'd remember a name as foreign as that." Naomi pondered the foreignness of Irish versus Hopi surnames. The secretary said, "I'm afraid I can't help you at all, Ms. Walsh. I just can't imagine why that name is in the paper but not on the docket, unless charges were dropped after the reporter picked it up, but before the actual hearing."

"I see."

"It does happen from time to time."

"I see."

"You might talk with the editor; he can probably clear it up for you, or let you talk to the reporter about it."

"Yeah."

"Sorry."

"Thanks for trying."

As Naomi made for her car, she tried to look nonchalant and see three hundred and sixty degrees around her at the same time. She saw no Sean, though, and no Bayer. Of course when she went to the newspaper, the reporter couldn't remember, couldn't help, couldn't stand still behind the front counter, couldn't wait for her to leave him in peace. Naomi smelled something about her search other than coyote.

"Onward," she muttered, and she drove old Route 66 east until it became I-40.

Twenty-six

I-40 to Winslow, after Two Guns, looks straight and flat, but dives in shallow zigzags almost a mile closer to sea level. Horizontal slabs on the south and north are the Mogollon Rim and Black Mesa. Christian radio. Wind at the windows. Next to no traffic. Stifling heat after the crisp uplands around Flagstaff. The eyes sting with heat haze, and stare.

Naomi pulled off at Milepost 252 to enter Winslow from the access road. She stopped at the first store, a faded turquoise cube with a pair of gas pumps in front. A long building behind it had a phone number in six-foot numbers and said, "U-Stor." The horizon between the buildings was level with her eyes.

The store owner ambled onto the porch and studied the desert across the highway while she filled her gas tank.

"Hello," she called, and smiled.

He was old, and worn so thin that his eyes had sunk into his skull. The cross on his bola tie sported Kingman turquoise. He continued to study the desert. She replaced the nozzle and screwed on the gas cap. He followed her in.

The tan Formica counter had a sleek cash register and impulse items. There were two widely spaced gondolas for snacks and motor oil, a white household refrigerator in the corner for sodas, and a couple of unopened cases of them. The calendar behind the counter featured Jesus feeding fish and bagnettes to a collection of blue-eyed people in robes.

Naomi got an idea. "Snowing at Page," she said as she fumbled in her wallet. She offered him a twenty-dollar bill.

"Got anything smaller?"

"I'll look."

She fumbled some more and brought out two fives. A flimsy business card managed to fall onto the counter and she let it stay while the man made change. 'The Call," the card read, with the name of the missionary who ran the shelter up at Cameron. The missionary was Naomi's occasional customer and one of her charities.

She accepted her change, spilled it and picked it up. She found her change purse and slipped the coins into it one by one. At last she noticed the card. She put it back into her wallet. She wandered to the refrigerator and pulled out a cola. Then she ambled to the revolving magazine rack.

The man remained at the cash register. "You know them?" he asked.

Naomi studied the cover of a week-old copy of U.S. News & World Report. She looked up. "The people at The Call? Yes, indeed."

"Good people."

"That's right," she said firmly. She opened the magazine to a whiskey ad and studied it. She counted to five. "They do a lot of good work up there, too."

The man took the same amount of time to think. "Are you a Christian, then?"

"I like to think so."

His blue eyes flashed with the ecstatic light of love. "Praise Jesus."

Naomi returned the magazine to the rack. "He is alive, praise His name." At the counter she counted out seven nickels for the soda. She said, "Maybe you can help me. I'm looking for a very sick man, a rancher who needs His help. His name is Cornelius Mitchell..."

"Mitchell? You want Cornelius Mitchell? Or his little brother Jimmy? Not that they're really brothers, technically speaking. They could both use some..."

Naomi put all her intensity into her voice. "I was sent for Corny Mitchell. They say he's a Christian. He has stomach trouble."

"That's true enough, but as I said, both him and Jimmy need help."

She interrupted again: "Do you know Brother Mitchell, then? My name is Jeannie Walsh. I run a typing service over in Flagstaff."

They shook hands.

"Charles Haight; glad to meet you. Yes, I know Corny and Jimmy from 'way back. Corny runs sheep right across the highway."

Naomi nodded. "Really?"

"That's the spread over there. Starts behind that fence, then runs west and angles south."

"How far is that?"

"Just follows the grass to the rim. About twelve, thirteen miles."

"That's a pretty big ranch, isn't it?"

"Depends who's measuring, doesn't it? There's spreads bigger than whole counties around here."

"Still..." She opened her cola. Fizz-pop echoed against cinderblock walls.

"Of course, sheep take up a lot of room," said Haight.

"I suppose that's true."

"Hoofs cut the life out of a range, if you keep the animals bunched in one place. I used to run some myself, before I got The Call." He smiled deprecatingly. "I minister here in town."

Warmly, "God bless you, Brother Haight."

Charles crossed his arms and leaned his crotch against the countertop. "Praise Jesus. But he does all right, Corny. He did until this stomach trouble started up last winter, anyway. I guess he's bought a congressman or two in his time." He grunted dryly, a chuckle that bumped his crotch against the counter. Bump.

"Really?"

"One or two." Bump. "Him and his big-shot brother." Bump. He grunted again; understatement was to be understood. "Lot of good it did him, though, didn't it? Even before this sickness, I mean. The Lord brings the high, low. Some new kind of sheep knocked the bottom right out of the market."

"Is that right?"

Bump. "New breed. Twice the lambs. Indians up north got 'em, and they won't sell to Corny Mitchell. Make twice the money he gets now. Jimmy Bayer Mitchell, like I said they're just half-brothers, Jimmy bankrolled Corny, and's almost to go broke because of it." Bump. He turned and spat tobacco juice into an invisible receptacle: Donk. "God sees to it that it all evens out." Bump.

"Amen."

"The kid, Corny's nephew, 'sgonna have his work cut out for him, 'less he can get some of the new stock." Bump.

"That would be Jimmy's son?"

Charles became aware that he was gossiping. He backed from the counter. "Well, I guess it's actually none of our business."

Naomi agreed with a nod, savoring the ironic effects of Dustin's research. She eyed the pious calendar and said, "Well, the Lord provides. Can you tell me how to get to Brother Mitchell's house?"

"Go to the Dairy Queen, then cross the highway at Mile 253. Second long drive on the right."

"Thank you. I appreciate it."

"He's in a big house with an electric gate. You'll have to call from the gate to get in, but he'll open up because you're a woman."

She waved goodbye from the door. "God bless."

"You get up to Cameron, you tell the mission Charles Haight's thinking of them."

Twenty-seven

The Winslow cop shop had an asphalt parking lot that crumpled to dirt at its margin. It heaved clouds of dust as Naomi rounded the little building. She parked and entered. The air that day was so still that the dust cloud had only lowered to ankle height when she emerged.

She had asked the man at the desk her questions and been handed to the Officer of the Day. The OD had referred her to the Deputy Sheriff in charge, then had begun murmuring into his telephone and following her with his eyes. She didn't learn a anything new from the deputy about Dr. E. James Bayer, his brother, his son or "the Mitchell spread" across the highway. The deputy was sorry, and took a long time to say so, but the OD was soon off the telephone.

So the law was shielding both Bayer and Sean, she realized. She could understand the locals protecting a rancher with a large spread, but why Sean? Unless he and Bayer were...no; Sean loathed the little chemist. But was he really...

Thinking hard, she headed for her car and decided she must call in Dustin, and his contacts, after all. Or rather, again.

Then someone grabbed her from behind and lifted her off her feet. Before she could yell or her outraged legs could kick or her writhing body could butt, she was thrown head-first over the folded front passenger seat of a waiting coupe. She landed halfway onto the lowered arm rest, throat first. Her arms were jerked back and tied. Her legs were shoved inside. The door slammed; the car started. Whoever got her hadn't made a sound, but he stank like dead flowers.

She was half-kneeling in the foot-well, being thrown side-to-side while the car took sharp corners out of town. She was not frightened, and credited Peakspore. She howled. It was a true howl that came from deep in her throat and scraped hard as it escaped, and it was satisfying. She decided to do it again. The second howl came out just as hard and felt just as good, long and loud and feral.

"Shut up! Just shut yoah mouf!"

Her animal eyes flew wide. She pivoted on her knees and stared upward between the front seats. Bayer hunched over the wheel, his arms jerking as he steered.

"Bastard!"

"Get back down! Oah..." He flailed at her between the seats. Naomi shoved herself the rest of the way up until she was sitting, and squirmed into the corner behind him so he couldn't reach.

Things were going off in her head like fireworks. Other things shouted at her from outside. The road crossed a low bridge and flattened onto a chapparel plain. The tires whisked on bedrock. Ahead, she saw streaked mounds of the Painted Desert, gray and yellow, a backdrop to even greater desolation beyond.

"Or what?" she asked, "Fool! That deputy is expecting me right back!"

"No, he's not! Sergeant Cwisp told me...!" He flailed at her again.

The side-view mirror reflected Bayer's face. Apart from the eyepatch, he looked the same; young, unlined, dewy-fleshed.

"You destroyed my life, Naomi Bessemew! First my chemical, and then you poked out my eye just like an animal. You wuined my marriage and my career. You took everything pweshus to me!" Something occurred to him so wonderful that he tittered. "Now it's yoah turn."

"I doubt that. Your wife left you because your balls couldn't even measure up to a woman’s!"

The car screeched to a halt. Bayer spun and Naomi dodged, angling her shoulder against the front passenger seat. Its catch gave way and it folded forward. Her knees were pinned under its rear, but her weight carried her beneath his blow. It would have been a terrific one, even without the added power of his Peakspore damage. It brought Bayer sideways and on top of her. He grabbed her hair, scrambling to his knees, and yanked her backward with all his weight. She screamed.

The sum of all the kill-or-die wildlife minds that squirmed outside the car, sentient and sapient, the desert's survivors, whomped into her mind and completed her transformation. Bayer's grip in her hair had her arched backward. He could break her spine.

She stilled. "Take me," she said.

Bayer paused.

"Go ahead! Fuck me. Fuck me blind. Now."

Confusion, then speculation dawned.

It was all the break Naomi needed. She roared. Ignoring the torment in her spine she heaved backward even more, pulling him off balance. She butted him. The second time she did it, his nose crunched and his teeth split his lips. She scrambled and butted and roared, pursued his pulpy face with her blood-spattered head. The whole world was a roar and the smell, the wondrous taste, of blood.

When she came to herself she was kneeling on him with her chest inside his flailing arms, her rear wedged against the steering wheel and her knees straddling him. He had no face. She burst the door open and they fell sideways to the sand, Naomi underneath.

Bayer rose and descended as though to butt her in return. Her kicking boot found his kneecap, then as he fell sideways, his crotch. He scrambled off, wide-legged as a spider. She leapt up raging and howling again, always off-balance, kicking and stomping whatever part of him she found: his side, his arm and hand, his head.

Coyote intervened. He came streaking and foam-mouthed. Bayer balled himself and folded his arms over his face. Yellow-tan, small and slavering, the coyote slashed at the back of the man's neck. It caught shoulder padding. Bayer screamed. The coyote whirled and slashed again. Except for its foaming mouth, it was almost playful; its tail was up, its ears were forward like an eager pup's. Bayer, hurt and by now entirely mad, froze. The coyote's third quick pass took more Harris tweed and left a track of slime. Its fourth nipped directly into Bayer's shoulder.

Naomi squatted and stepped onto the tail of her bindings, watching. Yanking, toppling, she struggled and the ties brought blood from her wrists, but she would lose a hand rather than remain tied.

So while the rabid coyote savaged Bayer’s arm, Naomi strained and willed her binding to rip. And after minutes, the nylon rope frayed apart. She charged the coyote. It stopped. She stopped. She stamped the ground.

"Git!"

It took a step closer. She stomped closer still. Blood dripped from her wrist and tickled the heel of her hand. Watching the coyote with one shoulder hunched against it, she lifted her hand to lick her wound. The coyote stepped nearer. Naomi roared and charged. The coyote hesitated, then dodged, paused and stumbled away across the desert floor.

Naomi watched until distance made it small. She prodded Bayer with her toe. He was curled onto his side, his arms still over his head. He watched her through torn eyelids.

"Stand up now," she told him. She waited. After a while she pulled his arm upward. There was neither resistance nor cooperation; the arm stayed up. "Stand," she repeated, and pulled again. He rose. Naomi opened the car door and folded the driver's seat forward. "Get in." Then, "Sit down." She fastened the seat belt across his lap. "Can't take it, can you, Jimmy? You've gone clean cataleptic."

Blood seeped over his chin and collar. More came through the tear in his jacket. He oozed sideways until he was curled onto the seat. The over-refined mind was gone to a kinder world.

She drove the half-mile across the bridge and into Winslow, wiping blood from her face. By the time she found the hospital, her wrists were licked clean.

She parked Bayer's car at the emergency entrance, pinned a note to him saying "RABID", wedged the horn so it blared, and trotted to her own car at the sheriff's station. At the Dairy Queen she had a chili dog and orange soda. She felt no pain and had no remorse.

But as she drove toward Flagstaff she stopped at Two Guns and poured tepid espresso from her thermos. Heat pressing through the closed windows overcame the air conditioning. Sweat dripped from her earlobes onto her shirt.

The stench took her by surprise after all. A coyote stepped from behind a billboard and, ignoring her yells and the blare of her horn, marked her front tires, then went to the back and marked there too, nonchalant, pissing, and finally crossing the empty highway to disappear between bunch grass. It left a trail of incandescence about a foot from the ground.

Twenty-eight

In follow-up, Wanda quoted her friend at the courthouse who worked for the Clerk of the Court. There had, indeed, never been a bona fide citation for a man surnamed either Colum or Telesveya.

Dustin quoted his friend at the regional office of the FBI; Bayer was currently a consultant in Bethesda, Maryland; had been living there for a couple of years.

Naomi figured there was nothing new about lies, obfuscation, diddling the public by the federal government. She would keep looking over her shoulder. Something was coming. Maybe she'd see it in time.

Although of course she thought she knew what to expect from Bayer when he recovered.

Twenty-nine

Clive and Wellesley were as tall and well-spoken as adults, but often as naive as infants. They legitimately cut up frogs in school; studied calculus, read and evaluated the classics. But as well, in one week they sat still through a concert of Plain Song; heard a lecture about gravity field variations, and accompanied Naomi to a seminar on effective business correspondence. She decided that the strain of maintaining all that niceness would be too much. So one night, testy and preoccupied with Bayer's unimproved state, she hung a punching bag under the porch, fitted boxing gloves onto the twins, and told them to hit the bag. It was nearly dark under there. They gazed at the dim punching bag, then at one another.

"Well?" Naomi asked.

"You'd get mad at us," Clive predicted.

"Don't be silly; of course not. That thing is made to be punched. Like in boxing. You know."

She backed out from under the porch and started to twist her heavy hair into a new knot. The twins watched her closely. She put the hairpins into her shirt pocket. "Look, kids; like this." She crouched next to the bag and hit it gently with one fist, then another. "You make a rhythm with your fists. Bop, bop, bop. See? Now you do it."

Wellesley obligingly approached and hit the punching bag gently with one glove, then another. Clive followed suit.

Naomi sighed. "All right. The other thing this bag is made for is to get your anger out. If you pretend you see some nasty face on it while you hit, your muscles will grow and you'll feel better. I want you kids to hit it."

"How long do you do it?" Wellesley wanted to know.

"Until you don't want to hit that face any more."

"Can you change faces?"

The girl was so intense and her stare so compelling that Naomi was reminded of...she flashed on it, forgot it, lost it.

"Sure, honey. Go ahead. And you don't have to tell anyone whose face it is."

She backed out again and retrieved her hairpins. Clive began hitting the punching bag with alternating gloves.

"Good, son. That's good." The bag developed a rhythm. "Good! Keep it up, now." The rhythm quickened and became a tattoo. "Yes!" The tattoo increased.

Wellesley left her brother and joined Naomi in the yard. "Stop him, mom," she whispered.

Naomi bent to hear over the sound of the racketing bag, one hand on the girl's shoulder. "What?"

"You have to stop him."

"What do you mean?"

Wellesley was jittering on her feet. "He can't quit."

It was probably true. Clive was so intent, his eyes were so tranced, that Naomi dropped the hairpins again and yanked him into the yard. She looked at one tight face, then the other. She saw another kid problem. She was tired of kid problems.

"What gives?" she asked roughly.

Wellesley answered. "It starts up inside and you can't stop it. It just gets stronger. You know." She was pleading.

"You mean being angry?"

"Yes. Mostly I can stop Clive. But he's getting strong..."

Clive was still spacey. "Yes," he intoned, and abruptly sat on the ground.

Wellesley had Naomi's undivided attention. "Do you mean you stop Clive from doing things?"

Wellesley paused. "Sometimes."

"With just your thinking?"

"Yes." Illustrating, Wellesley stared at her brother. Clive got to his feet, his look unwaveringly on her face, and briskly wiped dirt from his jeans. He was back to normal. Wellesley patted Naomi's arm. She said, "But he's never mad at you, mom."

Naomi's scary twins waited for guidance from their dumbfounded mother. She fell back on doublespeak.

"I do know how that anger feels, darlings, and I know it can be frightening, like having another child inside, a bad girl or a bad boy. It happens to we adults, too. But adults don't always have someone to stop them. They have to do it by themselves." She smiled winningly at each straining face. "Sometimes I used to think I couldn't stop it, like in nightmares. But I found out that I can. So can you. It just takes patience while you learn."

Clive shook his head. "We tried!"

"You're just beginning, honey, but we adults will help you, and you'll learn how."

He began to snuffle. "No! We tried!"

Naomi's patience ended. "Well, damn it, try again! And keep on trying! Like me! Try until you learn! You can't just let anger sit inside you, because it grows bigger, and it rots! Like garbage! You have to get rid of it!"

"We tried!" Clive repeated, crying now in earnest. "We tried but we beat things up anyway!"

"Pillows! You burst some pillows! Do you kids think I don't know that? That's what this bag is for!"

The worry on the children's faces was slowly masked by ersatz cheerfulness as ugly as a clown's. Naomi could have wept; she grabbed her babies and buried her face in their hair, blond and black.

"Hang in there, kids. You don't have to hit the damn bag unless you want to."

Thirty

So Clive studied martial arts, and as his height shot up further, he began to grow Rambo's muscles. When he and Wellesley tussled in play he bellowed like a swampthang and beat his chest. Wellesley groveled on her knees, whined for mercy like a slave, and Clive cackled.

Wellesley claimed to her mother that Clive was not playing, that she was in real danger, that Naomi should do something because he was too strong and he might forget he loved his sister.

Naomi could not believe it, and said so. Nevertheless she half-teasingly told him the difference between bullying and defense, told him he was bullying, and half-fearfully forbade the tussles.

True to his aberrational form, the boy immediately confined his feats of physical strength to the dojon and Wellesley, belatedly sprouting to adult size like her brother, became expert at the punching bag to please her mother.

Naomi sighed; too good would have to be all right.

Wellesley was fascinated by magic; she admired the snake-wielding Queen of Wild Beasts from Crete. Amused, Naomi made Clive help them lug stones into a circle on the ridge behind the house. They aligned a navel stone with one at the edge to mark the vernal equinox. Wellesley, muttering, surrounded the navel with a pentagram of pebbles.

"...Hear Me, and make all Spirits subject unto Me; so that every Spirit of the firmament and of the Ether, upon the Earth and under the Earth..."

A snake green as a jewel darted toward the girl, hesitated, and seemed to watch. It left a trail of disregarded esses in the pine needles.

"It's the Dragon of Destruction," Wellesley hissed, and Naomi and Clive laughed and ignored her intense stare, which went with the chant. Naomi didn't talk about the circle or the snake with Dustin, just as she hadn't mentioned her fight with Bayer. Some things were just too personal.

Dutiful exercise and arcane studies didn't make all of Wellesley's necessary adjustments, though. She began fighting at school, biting, howling, bellowing curses full of cabalistic words and ancient names. Naomi and Dustin found themselves seated before a social worker.

"So we seem to have a problem, then, Ms. Walsh, Dr. Begay. Wellesley tells me that she feels alienated."

The social worker’s name was Annemarie. She smiled brightly and propped her elbows on her desk; she rested her perky chin atop her interlaced fingers.

Naomi had had a bellyfull of patronizing social workers and their condescending jargon. She glared.

"Naw, you must be kidding! Just because she's an extra-smart half-breed bicultural rootless twin who first met her daddy at the age of six?"

Dustin slid her a look. Annemarie's smile set. One glittery hand reached for a pencil. "Believe me, Ms. Welsh, I didn't mean to patronize you. I simply want to help you parents, and Wellesley. We can't help until we define the problem."

"Well it's been pretty broadly defined, by harsh experience, as fits of psychotic rage coupled with a precocious mastery of, and belief in, sorcery. How about we find a new outlet for her unexpressed antagonism toward the human race? Some really heavy physical activity, maybe. We've tried boxing, wrestling. How about pile-driving?"

Dustin used an ancient ploy; he kicked Naomi's ankle. Then, before her wondering eyes he turned Anglo. His mellifluous voice was pitched low. He oozed sophistication.

"Forgive my ex-wife, Annemarie," he began, and hitched forward in his chair. "She's been under a lot of strain with this Wellesley thing. But wouldn't an initial approach perhaps involve our daughter in an aggressive, physical team sport?"

Annemarie smiled a professional smile at his reasonable cooperation. "In most cases, that would be an excellent idea, doctor. It seemed to work for her brother. But there are very few programs like that for girls. Perhaps track and field? Running, hurdle races, broad-jumping?"

Dustin objected politely. "But those aren't team sports. I, that is, we," he cast a heavy glance toward Naomi, "...feel that Wellesley should learn to work with others toward a common goal."

Naomi again eyed the social worker. Annemarie was nodding judiciously.

"At least that's my assessment," Dustin finished.

"Do you mean softball?"

"I don't believe softball would be active enough," he said. "Soccer, perhaps, where she would have to run a lot. And of course she doesn't need personal, one-on-one failure as might occur in basketball."

Annemarie retraced an old doodle on her blotter.

"I agree," Naomi offered, to keep her hand in.

Annemarie glanced up. "To tell the truth, Ms. Walsh, I don't know whether Wellesley is ready to play on a team. She comes from a tradition of intense individualism, you know, and..."

Naomi dropped cooperation. "You mean she's half Navajo, and those savages don't know how to work together."

"No, that's not what I mean; I put it crudely because I'm used to dealing with less sophisticated parents than yourselves." The social worker's gaze swept from the blotter to a tall window at her side, eliding Dustin-the-savage in his expensive leather jacket. "And simpler children. I mean that when Wellesley is balked, she's unpredictable. Perhaps her intelligence complicates her response. But when the opposing guard in basketball does her job, for example, Wellesley takes personal offense. Dr. Begay's concern is justified. If we put Wellesley regularly into a contact sport, she might hurt someone." She turned from the window.

"Oh." Naomi shifted on the vinyl seat of her chair and produced an embarrassing squawk. "You're right. Sorry. I've been a defensive snot." The other woman looked at her with renewed attention; Naomi like it. Dustin's lips flexed to suppress a smile; she'd deal with him later. She said, "Let's make the little witch run and jump until she's thoroughly winded, then. Every day."

"Track and field?"

"If her father agrees."

"And talk to me right afterward."

"And talk to you right afterward," Dustin agreed.

Naomi was mistaken to think Dustin was impatient with her. As they walked toward their cars his elbow casually jostled her arm. She looked up; his face was too bland.

"That was fun," he said, "I could do it all day."

That's when Naomi began to take Dustin seriously.

They worked with Annemarie‒her surname was Petrillo‒month after month without result. Wellesley, Annemarie first reported, had a well-integrated increment of selective flexibility (sneakiness) which eluded professional management (manipulation). She was also undergoing an adolescent fixation on sexual power (ga-ga about boys). Then, the girl's fascination with mythology and witchcraft were a hindrance which rendered her unresponsive to psychological management concepts, but on the other hand combined benignly with her precocious knowledge of "traditional" medicine, to become a potential tool to ameliorate her antisocial stance and heal her psyche. Over time.

Naomi swallowed a "Gawd damn."

Dustin leaned back in his chair and crossed a cashmere-clad ankle over a worsted-suited knee. He chuckled comfortably.

"She's a real handful, all right. And Annemarie, we have the utmost faith in the ultimate efficacy of your systemic supervisory approach. However, immediate positive, constructive results must quickly eventuate, you understand. In point of fact, they're positively mandated by Wellesley's very real potential for destructive behavior, destructive behavior which she represents to ordered institutions such as you represent here." Annemarie opened her mouth to speak, but Dustin oozed on.

"It's true Wellesley's physical and intellectual precocity place her well beyond her peers in apparent development, but they are patently well ahead of the stunted emotional development from which she appears to suffer. And frankly, despite your best efforts, they are ultimately no more than a miserable excuse for an emotional band-aid‒and a total failure with our real, human and suffering daughter. And she continues to fuck up everything around her. We, that is Jeannie and I and our daughter Wellesley, quit."

Annemarie abruptly rose but was speechless. Dustin led Naomi out, taking his time and tipping his black, silver-conchoed cowboy hat as he left.

***

Around that time Wellesley began to act like a social pre-teen, and Naomi decided maybe it was out of belated pity for Annemarie's earnest frustration.

Well, nearly social; Wellesley collected other young fringies and turned to scarifying sarcasm, then rumor-mongering, in order to dominate them. She kept them in line by teaching them ritual and magic. She used a confusion of half-learned Navajo tradition and Rosicrucian incantation involving the circles of stones above the house and another one made with tremendous boulders which she and Clive built with help from Dustin's men on the mesa, who grinned and loved it. The other girls admired and imitated Wellesley, or hated her. They shortened her name to "Sly" and the name stuck for the rest of her life. Wellesley was slender, elfin-faced, enchanting to see, and her singing voice was a powerful contralto.

Thirty-one

The twins reached ten. Dustin visited often and Naomi was surprised, then mystified, then tickled, that his diffidence melted and his prejudice seemed to, as well.

One housecleaning, wood-chopping, clothes-washing Saturday she realized that she liked him. Very much. Sure, she had once loved him. Maybe she still did. But she liked him; his essential quiet, his curiosity, his pride when she asked questions. At her office, he would stand in line with her customers until she recognized him and took him, smirking, to the hotel coffee shop. He gave her lessons in colloquial Navajo with puns so bawdy they made her blush. It did not occur to her that he might be courting.

There was no further word about Bayer. No Hopis wooed her and she heard no Irish brogue. For a couple of years the gas man came more often than necessary. She put it down to long-distance flirtation and turned the kids onto him until he stopped coming. The twins, closing on six feet tall, made smiling progress at school.

One autumn day Naomi forgot their lunch money. She left her office to deliver the money during the morning recess.

She didn't make it to the principal's office. In the play yard a knot of children boiled around Clive, who with studied patience palmed the blows of a much smaller boy. The boy hit and sobbed, struck again, then kicked ineffectually at Clive's shins. His puckered little face was red and frantic.

"Fight! Fight!"

"Hit him again!"

"Where?"

Wellesley cowered behind her brother, marble-pale and staring around his shoulder. Her teeth were bared in a snarl. She had a fixed stare.

Naomi's shoulders dropped, admitting disaster even before her brain took hold. Clive studied people-killing at the dojon. Immature as he was, his noble stance must dissolve under the other boy's continued attack, and he would strike. Naomi began shoving her way between chest-high children.

"She made him die!" the attacker screamed, "She said she would!"

"Did not!" Clive countered.

"She killed him!"

"How could she?"

"She's a witch!"

"So what?"

"With her snakes!"

Naomi did the wrong thing: "Wellesley!" she yelled.

Wellesley jerked to life. She shoved past Clive and bowled the boy to the ground, her fists full of his hair. She banged his forehead with hers.

"... I adjure thee, as the agent of the Emperor Lucifer, and of his..." The girl's deep voice echoed.

"She made his dad die!"

"Wellesley!"

"She made a grown-up die!"

Holding the boy's head and with her eyes rolled far into her skull, Wellesley butted him again. "By Marchosias's lightning wrath you are to DIE, to DIE, by the name of Mathon you are to sink into the pit of puss and slime and live no more...Butt...By the might and puissance of Michael, Archangel of Fire...Butt...you are to swell and BURST with burning and rottenness..."

Trees shivered. Sunlight darkened. Snakelets squirmed. Coyotes flitted beyond the ball field.

"Jeez!"

"Wow, man!"

"You see that?"

Naomi hauled her daughter off with the help of a flustered, blowing teacher.

"Mom!" Wellesley grabbed Naomi and ground her face against her mother's shoulder. "I couldn't stop! You know I couldn't!"

The teacher was screeching protest. "That boy's father just died! What kind of brutes are you raising, Mrs. Walsh?"

Naomi had no answer.

Thirty-two

Dustin descended from the mesa like Thor from his heaven; lightning was in his look, his voice smote like a hammer. The children quailed. After hours of his warnings, threats, lectures and pronouncements, their tears were dried but their faces remained pale. Dustin always meant what he said. Wellesley and Clive crept to their rooms.

Naomi collapsed; simply dissolved. She wailed. She cried all her tears and continued to sob. She pulled at her hair; wrapped her arms around herself; rocked where she stood. She could not forget her daughter's blaspheming, murderous voice or erase the sight of her mad face.

Dustin found her in the living room. He seldom touched her, much less held her as he did then, crooning and dabbing her face with tissues, fingering strands of hair away from her face. She rested in his arms like a confiding child.

Eventually she was cried out. She brought coffee into the living room and they sat by the hearth. There was a long silence. Dustin lit a fire. He rose, sat down again and adjusted the leather strap of his gold watch. Crossed and uncrossed his legs, swallowed a yawn. Picked up his mug. As unfamiliar as it had become, the stench of coyote settled itself before the fire like a familiar pet.

"Tell me," Naomi said. Dustin studied the box of logs. "What is it, Dustin?"

He set down his mug and began to pace, fireplace to bookcase and back. "It's not really about the twins; at least not directly." He paced another round. "It touches their background."

"Go ahead."

"Remember in Berkeley, the FBI was looking into homosexuals and us uppity minorities? Thought we were all communists?"

"Yes."

"One of the agents and I were friendly. He was half Hopi. So it was him and me against the world, even though officially we both worked for 'the world.' You know what I mean? A funny guy; made me laugh out loud. Telly could mimic anyone; Nichols and May, Jack Benny, anyone."

"And?"

Dustin shrugged his shoulders about a foolish man. "So about a week before you interviewed Bayer and me, he took a full dose of Peakspore."

Naomi goggled. Dustin wiped at his face and sat down.

"A full dose for his body weight. He was just curious, like a kid. A lab assistant was with him, but you know how they can be; busy, or just careless. I was at a faculty meeting and Telly was waiting for me so we could to go to lunch. He took a syringe and dosed himself, just shoved the needle into his arm because he was waiting and he was bored.

"Things happened too quickly for us to help him. He got a headache and turned nauseous. Got violent and waved a gun around. Then he went blind." Dustin swallowed. "He was mad as hell. Jim, Jim Bayer, walked in while that was going on. We got Telly to the infirmary and they sent him to the hospital. I went along. A couple of hours later his sight came back. He was lucid, but mad. I mean he was crazy. And..." Dustin reached for his mug. He looked at Naomi. "...he had this thing. This ability. He attracted snakes."

"Snakes?"

"Garden snakes, gopher snakes, whatever was around. Small or sizeable. They just crawled toward him. Right down the halls toward the lab, then the infirmary. Later, even into the hospital. Snakes. He called them. Told them to bite people."

"Snakes."

Dustin paced. Naomi stared. He said, "You don't believe me."

"What happened to the man? Your friend? You've mentioned him before, but not this way."

"I don't know all of it. He got better. He was almost back to normal when he first showed up. He lives up on Second Mesa now; looks like the stuff wore off. Of him, anyway." The parallel to their own situation was too obvious to state. "That's your primate though, the one you asked Jim Bayer about." Dustin sat. He rubbed his hands together.

"You think that's what happened today. With Wellesley."

"In a way. My friend wasn’t an animal, like our test subjects; he was, is, human. But he had to be restrained or he'd have hurt someone."

Naomi thought of her own transformations against Bayer. She said, "I have a log from your lab. It's in a box under my bed."

"Still? After so long? I hope you haven't let anyone find it."

"The kids? No."

"Do they know about Peakspore? I haven't told them; they'd only begin to experiment."

Naomi rose for more coffee as Dustin had, covering guilt too. He continued to dry-wash his hands. "Maybe we should," she said. "Maybe it would help. In a way, it's only fair." She carried her mug to a window and stared at the forest.

"Not yet, though," Dustin said. "Telly used to hear voices and smell flowers. Besides the thing about snakes. I think the children do it, too. You and I received less damage from Peakspore, but when I'm really mad I find spiders everywhere. You see Coyote."

"No," Naomi began, because she was getting hysterical again. "No way, Dustin. That's really crazy. I don't actually know where your head's at about spirits and things, but..."

"You know every important thing about me."

"...but I, for one, stopped believing fairy tales when I was a little girl. I believe in facts, Dustin. I believe in what I can touch. I believe..."

"Look outside."

"...in Science and The Scientific Method..."

"By the gas tank."

"...in what can be Measured. What can be Reproduced by anyone else under the Same Conditions. I believe in this chair, that table, this coffee. My whole life is secured by, is anchored on, the Secure Foundation of The Rational. Magic is a crock. Superstition is a cheat. You can't make something out of nothing."

He rose and wrapped her from behind with his arms. He pointed into the yard. "Look."

"No!"

Coyote was behind the tank. His ears were cocked attentively toward the house. Another, and a third, trotted across the little meadow to join him. More of them shook the tops of ground cover.

"Oh, god." She set her mug on the window sill and covered her eyes.

"It may get worse before it gets better, Naomi." He turned her around. His voice became soft. "If we were married, we could work to stop each other's manifestations. Our symptoms. We could handle the children's problems together. It would be easier. We would all be safer. Safe." She looked up at him through tears. "And you wouldn't have to work," he added.

Time stopped. She absolutely could not let him see her face. She freed herself and turned to stare; at the impossible gathering of coyotes, at the fireplace. A spider crept across a seam between stones and disappeared.

"Was that a proposal?"

He became as solid as stone. "If you like."

"Oh, God."

Love and longing nearly carried her back to him. She ached to kiss his sad eyes, his bitter mouth. She wanted the whole feel of him; the dark, sustaining intimacy of their love and sex. If he had reached for her again; if he had said one single tender thing, she would have married him, turned Navajo and loved him forever. He didn't; she wanted to die.

Now she sounded sane; nervy, but rational. "I can't marry you. We can't marry. We might have more babies. And if the FBI found me with you, you'd be taken in for harboring a fugitive, whether they really recognized you or not. Then the children wouldn't have anyone."

They stood like that until the room got cold. The fire died without a sound. When she finally looked back up at him, Dustin turned away. He noticed the upright loom behind his chair. "Is that a loom?"

"Yes."

"Do you weave?"

She turned perky. "Yes! I dye and spin and weave. Wanda taught me."

"What have you made? Not Navajo blankets."

She brightened even more. "Of course not, I'm no Navajo! But I'm good. See?" She unfolded a blanket from the top of a chest.

"It's green."

"Sure it's green. Well, moss green."

"And you have red numbers in the middle of it."

"You bet! Forty-two, the answer to the riddle of life, the universe and everything."

"Hunh. Games." He fumbled with his hands. "Here. You might want this, anyway." He handed her a little box that obviously contained a ring and made for the children's rooms.

Thirty-three

The twins spent weeks with their father on tranquilizers and then in therapy before they returned to Flagstaff. Once home, they were scholastically ready for pre-med studies at Northern Arizona University in the south part of town. They were affectionate toward Grace and tolerably obedient to Naomi and Dustin.

Naomi needed to talk to someone who knew Peakspore, but with another view of her problem. Dustin was too close to be objective; she wrote to Sean Colum in Ireland. Maybe he was a psychotic killer from the IRA, or the pathetic "ranger" who alternately threatened and courted her. On the other hand, he might really be an Irish journalist. He could still be the ally who was outraged by, and had a willingness to destroy, Peakspore. She didn't mention the compound in her letter, or their destructive work against it; she still expected spies in her mailbox.

April 14, 1978

Dear Mr. Colum:

Perhaps you remember our times in northern California and San Francisco when we were involved with the news. If you do, please contact me at the address below. I have continued to monitor the subject of our work, and have interesting and puzzling information about it. I would like to consult you.

Thank you.

Then she waited.

May 21, 1978

Jeannie, lass:

Of course I remember you. And what a delightful surprise was your letter! I shall come as soon as I am free, of course, but this missive will have time to arrive before I can.

As you may imagine, and even as I predicted at the time we worked together, my labors this side of the pond continue to be denigrated but secretly applauded by Those Who Know. Your voice on the phone will speak volumes about this‒perhaps of smug pride?‒and your presence will sureely confirm all. And à propos, I am occasionally assigned to the western U.S. for features about your country's relations with Mexico. Would that please? I can pull strings.

You'll recall that I have married, as I expect you have as well. We have produced a lovely daughter who is ten years old and very bright, a boy of eight who promises much in the way of looks, and a facially nondescript babe of 13 months. My wife is a saint. I continue cross-grained, of course. I can be reached at the following number.

***

Sean arrived in Phoenix in late July. A layover, he explained on the phone; he would have to go on to San Diego, but could return to Phoenix within a few days. Something about a Mexican mafia. Naomi drove to Sky Harbor, dreading his touch and wondering how many questions to ask and how much of her private life she could tell him.

They were to meet in the bar of the international terminal. The weather was hot; even in air conditioning it was just short of comfortable. She sipped tequila and watched arrivals pass the wide arch that was an entrance. There were plump Arabs in agals and khufillas; white-faced Europeans in suits or silk dresses; returning Americans in jeans. A silly-looking, round-faced man in tweeds who wore a bright, kelly-green tie.

It was Sean. Details returned to her memory; the hero's profile, the scar on the eyebrow and his odd strength. They shook hands and she smiled brightly. He was all affability, squeezing her fingers, smiling, setting his briefcase on the floor to hold her at arm's length and gaze. He signaled broadly to the bartender.

"You need to go to the bar, Sean. There are no waiters."

"Oh? Very well. What's your pleasure?"

She indicated her shot glass. "I'm fully pleased, thank you. I believe they carry Grolsch, but whiskey is not a good idea in our heat."

He shook his head. "I'll have tequila. When in Rome, right? Also, I've acquired a taste for it. Back in half a tick."

He stood at the bar and Naomi observed him from behind, away from that awful tie and brogue. He wore heavy walking shoes, a tweed jacket, widely pleated flannel slacks. Even in Belfast it was surely known that Phoenix in July means heat. And "half a tick"? It was an English expression, not Irish, and a bit much. But then, she was reacting to an old, and no doubt embroidered, revulsion. It had been years; she would give the man a chance.

He turned from the bar and smiled. She smiled back. "You haven't changed either," she called.

He paid, accepted his shot, and rubbed lime on the lip of his glass as he walked back. "You're a flatterer, because married life has certainly aged me. You, of course remain the luscious bit you ever were."

"A function of our labors, Sean."

"Oh, yes. Right. Our labors." He sat and looked thoughtful. "Tell me your news."

He hadn't questioned her disappearance in Eureka. It raised another small flag; she paused. "All right, first I'll catch you up. My symptoms these days are easier to live with. Maybe they're abating; I can't tell without a measuring stick. I'm psychic with ordinary people. It's a limited thing, but strong enough to know what people want within the situation. Know what I mean?" He nodded. "I can direct the path of small animals."

"I beg your pardon?"

The table between them was round and small, just a bit too high for either of them. She lifted her elbow onto it and her cheek onto her fist. "I hoped you'd be impressed. Small animals. Cats, mice, squirrels, the serpents and reptiles that live around my home. Small lap dogs, even spiders. They go where I tell them to."

He was intent. "You direct them...how?"

"Hm."

"I mean, you sensed peoples' presence in Berkeley. But directing wildlife? Surely that's new. How do you do it?"

"Well it's not by thinking, but it's intentional. If a wolf spider is in the house‒they're poisonous‒I just expel it. I hit it with a thought; a strong thought. With my mind. I can't describe it any other way. If the spider doesn't leave right away, I picture the exit, like pointing to a bright window. But I don't think words."

"I see."

"Then if it still doesn't get it, I picture it dead with all its kind. Acres of dead wolf spiders, squished."

Sean leaned back, smiling. "And cats? No, I'm teasing you."

"Well, it works with spiders. Cats just get up and stalk away with their ears flat."

"Truly? Do you make a noise? Hiss?"

"No."

"Are you a violent person? I mean, excessively given to slaughter?" He smiled again. "Of course, you Americans are all said to be that."

"No. I am not violent unless I'm threatened. But when I am, I'm pretty much unstoppable. That's part of the interesting news, Sean. I only received a weak dose, so my symptoms are minimal. But my daughter‒she's twelve, a twin of course‒"

"True? My daughter is too. Unfortunately, her brother died at childbirth."

"I'm sorry to hear it."

"Go on, acushla."

She checked the bartender, who was deep in conversation with a curvaceous woman. Still she hesitated, and still her need to confide overrode her caution. "My second-generation daughter is a potential killer. I suspected it before, but now her classmates say she killed a boy's father with witchcraft. She brandishes snakes. I wrote to you as soon as I learned."

He leaned forward. "Explain."

"She has psychotic episodes and spins out of control. She actually goes mad. She gets a mottled face and all the symptoms of a demented monster in a Gothic novel. Her brother too, but with him, it's less pronounced. Sometimes he's cruel, but usually he just follows her lead."

"I see."

"They're both ultra-bright. Dr. Bayer predicted that. And they're nearly six feet tall."

"They aren't!"

"They both attract, or perhaps they manufacture, exotic snakes when they're excited or upset."

"No."

"Listen; this is the spooky part. Last month my daughter began shouting cabalistic gibberish and butting a little boy with her head. No, don't say it, I'm not asking for pity. Sean, the sky went dark! The sun was still shining, but the light was gone!" She waited, but he didn't react. "How is that possible?" she prompted.

He covered her hand with his. He produced a slow, pitying smile. "It's not possible, Naomi. Your own horror produced the effect."

She removed her hand. "It didn't. I know what you mean, and I've experienced that sort of fear. This was different. There were no shadows. None. They disappeared from under my feet when I was pulling her off that little boy. The shadows were gone. Gone from under the kids on the playground, and the trees behind the school. There were no shadows behind the buildings. It was like a solar eclipse, but the sun was shining."

He finished his shot and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, watching her all the time. "A cloud," he said.

"No."

"You accept it as witchcraft?"

"No. Not witchcraft."

"What, then?"

"I don't know."

"Who is the father?"

"That isn't important."

"He might have a history in the psychic world. An intern from Berkeley? Tell me." His knee was bouncing; it jiggled the table.

"I won't tell you, Sean." His hand disappeared downward; the jiggling stopped. She continued. "You live so far from the situation that you might forget how important these details can be. So many implications."

"Sorry, acushla. You're right, of course."

"Why are my kids butting like blown-up versions of those killer sheep in the lab? And what causes this disgusting business with the snakes? And how did my little girl steal the light of the...of the sun?"

He studied his shot glass, looked up. "Do your twins have access to more of the compound, Naomi? Is anyone giving them more Peakspore?"

"No. Of course not."

"Ooh?"

"Their father is the only one in Flag who knows about the stuff."

"He's in Flagstaff?"

She recognized her mistake too late. "He visits."

Sean held his pose, staring full-bore into her eyes. "But you said 'Flag.' Was it a slip of the tongue?"

She glanced away. "Are you here to help me, Sean?"

The tension slackened. "Sorry, Naomi. I've had too many years of prying information out of politicos. You've no idea how difficult that can be."

That rankled. "I think I remember."

He blinked. "Oh, quite. Quite. But I was asking about the possibility of continued, or repeated, exposure to Peakspore by your children. Is it possible?"

"No. Absolutely."

"Truth?"

She remembered Bayer's proximity to Flagstaff and the impersonated park ranger who knew her business address; the man who delivered propane. The twins were without her supervision all during the business day, often far away at Dustin's, and they even attended an occasional weekend party with friends. Her serenity was fantasy, nothing else. She could have spit. "Truth," she said weakly.

She studied Sean for the hundredth time, deciding against her better judgment to trust him. The curious man facing‒no, staring at her, he'd not stopped since he arrived‒was a mere dumpling. For all his casual ease he was very foreign. His teeth when he smiled were unevenly colored and one, in front, was crooked. His hair waved straight back from a low forehead. His shoulders were round. His belly yielded to his belt. His ears, even half-covered by his longish hair, stood out from his skull. He was perhaps five-feet-six, whereas her suitor-stalker was barely taller than she was.

She blurted, "Lord! It's good to have someone to talk to!"

And she proceeded to talk, to just let it come out. They had a second drink. She went on talking.

At length he checked his watch. "I must be off. I'll think about what you say while in San Diego, then join you in Flagstaff for a day or so."

She hadn't finished talking: "Wonderful."

"I'll be there no later than Tuesday week." He was gone.

She had driven three hours, paid five dollars to park, and endured nasty heat all for thirty minutes of‒what? Confession. Self-disclosure. She wanted information, a few suggestions, but got nothing. Damn.

She dawdled over magazines in the gift shop, sweating and dripping from her ear lobes. She grumped her way back into the concourse, found a jitney and moped in it all the way to the parking lot. Then she trudged in her uncomfortable heels to her pickup.

As she drove over the Salt River bridge toward downtown Phoenix, she remembered the upstairs bar of a good hotel. She fled to its cold embrace and ordered more tequila. Through the window-wall, Camelback Mountain was a series of hillocks hock-deep in suburban sprawl.

Eventually she got enough emotional distance to consider Sean's point. It was true; the twins might be secretly, even repeatedly, exposed to Peakspore. But how could she discover whether it had happened? Would they tell her? Their automatic obedience was long-gone, and their openness a sometime thing. Wellesley obviously had studied more witchcraft than she admitted, and Clive used a studied and arrogant self-restraint for his own ends. Her own hysteria over the fight in the schoolyard was another problem. And Lord, did she really believe the sky darkened under her daughter's curse? Worse, did she believe in pure, unmanifest evil? A principle of evil strong and purposive? Did she believe it possessed her children?

Another thing: How could she not have been aware of her own forlorn need to talk? She wasn't used to crying, it was a luxury. But in finally admitting to Sean her terror during the years since Eureka, she had come near to tears. It was self-pity. She had indulged it, but now she would dismiss it. Really.

She wandered to the restroom to comb her hair and restore her lipstick. As she emerged she found a crumpled tissue in her purse. She tossed it into a waste bin between elevators. As the lid swung back she caught a glimpse of kelly green.

She froze, then pushed back the lid to see. A woman near her watched and smiled. Naomi decided what the hell and retrieved Sean's tie. Then she rushed back to the restroom, about to vomit. When she finally asked for him at the hotel desk, he was a no-show.

Thirty-four

All during her drive home and much of the ten days until Sean would return, Naomi seethed. The bastard, the dirty bastard. How dare he, who did he think he was, where did he get the nerve? What was he really doing in Phoenix?

He walked into her office on the appointed Tuesday a smiling, pudgy everyman wearing the same tweeds and a very conservative blue tie. She didn't know whether to light into him or string him along. She got no answer from him except for the obvious, that he was looking for a story about her; he was a journalist.

He caught her off-guard in another way. Over their initial cuppa in the hotel coffee shop he said, "I thought your news important, so I contacted the FBI Public Affairs people." As she did a covert double-take he poured half-and-half into his tea. "About Peakspore. They wired me their latest blurb for public consumption. Here it is." He produced a press release from his inside pocket and laid it sideways onto the table. He palmed a business card that fell out with the paper.

The letterhead on the blurb was tastefully small and the press release looked official. Peakspore's checkered history was condensed in the second paragraph; the first was pure hype that lauded America's unfailing efforts for peace.

"Down here they become more specific," Sean said, and his blunt fingertip hit the third paragraph toward the bottom of page one. "If specific is a word that applies," he went on. "For example, what does 'long-term test results continue inconclusive' mean, when you're discussing stuff that threatens to damage all of humanity? Also, the release doesn't say how long the 'current tests' have continued."

Naomi twisted her head to read. "Right. And it doesn't mention what kind of subjects they test. It's all bureaucratic doublespeak."

Sean nodded and flipped the page over. The neat, double-spaced typescript continued, but still reversed. He pivoted the page. "Here's another example: 'Criticism of anomalous behavior following administration of Peakspore as a gas has been largely discounted..." He raised his eyes to hers before he continued, "...in view of behavioral amelioration under doses delivered in gel or lotion.' What can that mean?"

"I don’t know. What?"

"I will tell you, my youthful friend. The material you and I knew could not have been administered through the skin; not at all. Peakspore had to get directly into the blood. It had to be ingested in significant quantity. It was delivered as a gas for circulation through the lungs, or via hypodermic directly to the muscle. But to dilute it with a lotion applied to the skin, or diluted that much with anything, would have made it ineffective.

"There is thus no Peakspore available to your government. There may be insipid substitutes, but the real, pernicious, criminal and misbegotten shit, is just not there!"

Relief. Joy. For a moment Naomi thought she could fly. The government had no Peakspore. And couldn't make it. With Bayer wounded and vague, and with Dustin settled as a mere rancher with another name, there never would be any more of the stuff. Never. And with her diminishing symptoms, surely there was hope that the twins might be cured.

Tears brimmed. "Give me a hug, partner," she crowed. But while he leaned over their table she slipped that fallen business card from his pocket to hers.

It was time for recess at the school; she took him directly there so he would see the twins. He could watch from the parking lot and maybe get some ideas about their behavior while they didn't know they were being watched.

He didn't stay in the truck, though. He leaned against a flag pole, so extremely casual that Naomi's suspicions were reignited. And yes, she discovered, he was filming the playground. He had a movie camera so small that its lens snugged into the circle between his thumb and forefinger. "Lovely," he said, and furtively panned a shot as he turned toward her. "Certainly tall, but lovely children. Normal behavior." The lens continued moving toward her.

Smiling directly into his eyes, Naomi knocked the camera from his hand and stomped as it fell. The crunch against the pavement was metallic. Sean backed away, startled. She retrieved the roll of impossibly narrow film. When she straightened, her look could have ignited flesh.

He shrugged. "That's normal behavior on my part too, lass. Sorry."

She locked the doors as she got into the pickup. "I don't have a car!" he called from the flagpole. He seemed amused.

"Walk!"

"I don't know the way!"

"Tough!"

She drove off, reaching into her pocket for that business card. It was soiled and creased. It came from E. James Bayer.

"God damn!" she ranted.

After a shaky mile, "Of course they were in cahoots! Sean was planted in the Mayor's office to keep track of me while Bayer tried to con me. And that's why Sean knew Bayer's home address. The burglary was necessary so Bayer could call the cops. Make the whole affair about stolen Peakspore into a federal case." She slowed from a crawl to a full stop.

"Only, wait. The Feds were in charge anyhow. And we really did get rid of Peakspore that night."

The car behind her honked and she moved on. Sanity and order; she began to calm down. "He probably changed his mind when he saw what it does to animals. And after that night, he and Clive helped me and the cops took him in. And after all, the IRA phone numbers he gave me were legit." She parked in the hotel parking lot and sat behind the wheel, bemused and stymied. "The little prick's got an angle, though. All that blarney and 'Erin-go-bragh' stuff. Maybe he just wants a story for his paper, though. An exclusive. No, he could have done something like that when he played Ranger. If he played Ranger."

Staring at the brick wall ahead of her, fingering the keys in the ignition, she consulted her gut and found no immediate threat.

Thirty-five

Wellesley was permitted to play with magic because she would have studied it behind her parents' back. Clive found a mentor at his dojon and worked hard. His mentor was introduced as "Manny, my best friend." Manny was a bent ancient of shiny brown skin and had a wide face covered with acne scars. He lisped. Clive won a mock battle with him during the annual exhibition.

There were uneasy, flesh-creeping moments for Naomi during that Halloween. She bought Clive a costume as Count Chocula, and he created his own makeup. His ears stuck out and his teeth were unevenly colored. His hairline was lowered. With his round face, he was the spit and image of Sean Colum. Naomi realized that all of the Irishman's physical differences from the Hopi "park ranger" could be achieved with the cheap kit she bought from a novelty store.

But when she called the phone number in Ireland, a pleasant woman brought Sean to the phone and they chatted. Heavy sigh.

The children behaved for nearly two years. Bayer was reported by Charles Haight to progress from the fetal position through stages of confusion, then plastic surgery and recovery. Naomi doubted the "recovery" part of the storekeeper's report.

Thirty-six

"Clive shaved his mustache," Wellesley announced one Fall morning, and bussed her mother as she sat down to breakfast. At thirteen she was lovely and rounded, six-feet three but at last shorter than Clive, who was six-feet five. They were Juniors at NAU, honor students and outstanding athletes. Naomi's memories of their scary times, as well as those with Sean and Bayer, were vague. She spent her leisure time proudly enjoying her kids.

Clive was reading an anatomy textbook as he ate. He looked up at his sister's voice, his fey eyes refocusing. Sunlight stroked his hair to the color of tow. "It looked silly," he said.

"Told you it would," Naomi teased.

"Yes." He was already back into the book.

"Let me have that paper. I'll have Ione type it up."

He handed it over from the backpack at his feet, still reading. Naomi riffled through it.

"It's about twenty-seven pages typed, hon. What shall I cut?"

"It is? Damn; I can't cut anything."

"Sure you can. There are two pages of 'therefores' and 'ascendings' and 'transversings.' Use smaller words."

"They don't mean the same thing."

"Fudge. You'll have to, to cut two pages."

Clive grudgingly accepted the papers and started to edit with the pencil stub that Wellesley handed to him.

Wellesley had an idea. "You know what I did when I took his class? I just used the words we did when we first started reading that stuff. You remember, 'the esophagus goes between the mouth and stomach.' Don't say pharynx or connects."

"Hunh."

"Anyway, Traub doesn't know mouth and pharynx don't mean the same thing."

"Sure."

"He thinks 'anal-retentive' refers to retaining a prescriptive enema." Clive grinned as he exxed. "He does! That's what I called Menninger, 'anal-retentive', and Traub told me the Good Doctor had excellent bowel habits." Clive grinned again. "He was serious."

"Bull."

Naomi gloated over her juice, but she was eager to leave for work. She was about to add a part-time paralegal, and their contract needed attention. Also, final exams were on their way; that meant double the business and three times the work hours.

"Do you know Stan Mitchell?" Wellesley asked.

"No." Clive lifted his head and studied his sister. "Why?"

"Just wondered."

Naomi picked up tension‒no, excitement‒from her daughter, but didn't connect 'Stan' and 'Mitchell.'

"You meet him?" Clive asked.

"Well, obviously. He's in ROTC."

"Where did you meet a boy from ROTC?" Naomi asked. She grabbed Clive's paper and stuffed it into her bag.

"In South Commons."

"It was a rhetorical question, love."

Wellesley never mentioned her schoolmates by name.

***

Enough was enough. That night, Naomi recited The Story of Naomi and The Bayer. In full. She faltered, took courage in hand, rushed, blushed, paused, and finally finished.

She had hoped the twins would help her mourn for Dustin's wound or her friend Clive's murder. Instead, they asked to see the papers she had kept. Naomi felt sure the technical material, with its gaps of sequence and data, was beyond a layman's understanding.

She had underestimated her children's precocity. Not only did they understand the equations, the recorded failures, the successful back-tracking and going forward that were implied by Bayer's and Dustin's notes; they anticipated them. They hunched over the records scattered across her braided bedroom rug, musing and exclaiming and trading glances loaded with meaning.

Naomi slouched on the bed in a funk of strategic defeat. "So that's it, kids? No questions?"

"We knew," Wellesley explained. Reaching up and back, she patted Naomi's ankle while she reread one of the scrawls.

"Why you were being hounded," Clive finished. "Not this factual stuff, though." His smile would have healed cancer.

"When did you know?"

The twins turned to one another. "It must have been..." Wellesley began.

"Yeah," Clive finished, "that time you poked the man in the face. Was that Bayer?"

Naomi sighed. "Yes, that was Dr. Bayer."

"You grieved for his wounds," Wellesley said.

"Grieved, Wellesley? Wounds? That’s melodramatic. I had to hurt him, and I'm sorry."

"But you felt it for months, mom."

The wet feel on her fingers from the attack: Naomi pulled a face only Clive could see. "...Yes, I did. How do you know?"

"What you suspect is true, mother," Clive said. He never called her "mother". Now his voice was warm, his eyes bright. "We feel what you feel. We love what you love. Like Manny says, we're alike, all three of us, a family. Only we're stronger than most families, because we read each other whether we know it or not, and want to stop being victims even when we're busiest acting as if we already aren't."

"Psychic?" Naomi asked, "Victims?" She managed to snort. "Perhaps you two are victims; I'm neither. I'm empathic and outraged by the entire situation. That's all."

Wellesley clambered onto the foot of the bed. Legs crossed and looking concerned, she faced Naomi. "Mom, sometimes we're still scared. But we feel emotionally stronger than other people. It's only natural. Don't you as well?"

"After all, you made it," Clive chimed. Naomi began to feel surrounded. "You never gave up. You beat the bastards, and kept us fed and healthy. Gave up your own career, and built a successful business. Adapted. Won!"

"Jesus," Naomi said, and got off the bed. At the door she turned. "Stop patronizing me, Clive. I'd like to confide in you even more, but I can't talk to a carney pitchman."

"But we know!"

Next morning she told Dustin on the phone. He didn't like it. "You showed them those papers?"

"Yes. And I got the damnedest feeling, as if they followed every step of your work from those few notes."

"Were you surprised?" He wasn’t being patient.

"Well, yes! They remarked...I mean they said peripheral sorts of things about the notes, and spoke in a sort of shorthand. You know how they communicate without speaking. You'd have understood their inferences. Blood chemistry; their Athabaskan heritage; that sort of thing."

He gave a long sigh. "Christ, Jeannie."

"What?"

"They inferred the salient approach from a scattered bunch of very old notes. They're super-kids. At thirteen they're already in college."

"Yes, but..."

"Have you ever wondered why you and Jim Bayer were affected differently from me? Or the twins differently from the lab animals?"

"Sure, but..."

"Blood, type, Jeannie. We Athabaskans, that's Wellesley and Clive and I, have type-O blood. Do you? Does Jim? It's the line of research I've concentrated on for almost two years now, plus the extra-durable dendrites I'm finding in my animals. I want to build an antidote, if I can."

"You have? They did?"

Another sigh, a pause. "Well, now you realize. If they want to, the twins can probably make their own Peakspore just from what you showed them. Bayer's version." Naomi couldn't answer. Dustin asked, "How much do you trust the children, Jeannie?"

She hung up.

Thirty-seven

The twins did nothing overt with their knowledge. However, on Dustin’s mesa the next summer, Wellesley and Grace conned his men into erecting a second stone circle around the first one. Clive drove Dustin's forklift to bring tremendous boulders uphill from the arid bed of Kaibito Wash. Dustin was away on business. When he got back, Grace talked him out of his anger. She believed it was a copy of a circle created by the Old Ones.

Naomi and Dustin gradually became easy with one another. On the strength of it, Naomi left her expanded business to Wanda for a while and joined the twins in Dustin's guest wing. Dustin was cordial. Grace put up with her help. Dustin's assistants were almost friendly as she snooped, still looking for permutations of Peakspore. Since it was June, the monsoon season had not begun. It couldn't have been more pleasant.

One day she rose before sunrise to ride the gentle gelding she mostly used. Pale light dusted everything gray. Pens and a stable were behind a large corral, a warm-smelling maze of beaten mud and stone ledges that also held the cinder-block bunk house. Beyond the maze, near the laboratory and The Arm, the remaining Peakspore animals were kept behind high, nearly solid, walls. Naomi always steered clear of their noise.

The Peakspore animals included: violent, gigantic twin Brahma bulls; equally violent, gigantic twin quarter horses; and a violent, curly-horned ram named Thunder, huge as a bull.

Dustin doted on Thunder, long-haired and a lustrous gold, randier than anything Naomi had ever seen. "I owe him," Dustin claimed. "He sired my stock and I bred down."

Now there was a disturbance from the Peakspore pens, a muffled shout, and a crash of splintering wood. Clive, mounted and just visible, struggled to control his mount and at the same time manage a long, awkward pole.

Naomi flew, her head buzzing with voices.

Thunder was through his cage and attacking Clive's horse. He reared; he butted; his curling horns hit the space on each side of Clive's stirruped right leg. The horse's breath exploded and he hit the fence, white-eyed and wedged between it and the monstrous ram. Clive's opposite leg was pinned to the fence by the horse's weight. His pole, like a picador's barb, dug steeply into the wool between the ram's shoulders.

"Thunder!" Naomi bellowed.

Waving her arms she reached him, yanked at his tail as hard as she could, realized her danger and quailed but held on. Thunder ignored her. He reared and butted again. As his weight lifted from the horse, Clive jerked free and grabbed the top rail of the high fence. The pole skimmed Naomi’s head as it flew. Thunder struck the horse another time: it fell. Clive was onto the rail.

Naomi, too hyper to hesitate and too mad to stop, flapped her sweater and waved her arms right next to the ram's head until he swiveled toward her. He lowered his head to butt. His slotted, space-alien eyes, level with hers, were even more daunting than his horns. Naomi didn’t notice. She pointed an outraged finger:

"Get into that pen!"

Surprisingly, that's just what Thunder did. He turned and picked his way delicately over the boards he had splintered.

Clive's mount rose shakily and stood. Naomi peered inside the pen. A big, pretty ewe greeted Thunder with a winning bleat and trotted toward him. Dustin's experimental stud program was thus ongoing.

Clive spoke from atop the fence behind her. "Hang your sweater in the hole, mom. He's so dumb he'll think it's a board."

She looked up at her son and for the first time realized he had the body of a full-grown, muscled man. "Get your miserable ass down here and see to your horse, you punk!"

"My leg hurts!"

"God damn it, it's not broken! Get down here and tend your injured mount!"

Thirty-eight

The apricot dawn was cold in the hollows; it was early enough to magnify distant sounds. Still angry, Naomi ascended the rise behind the pens, brushing her jeans against chaparral and watching for sleepy rattlers. After a while a big, spreading cottonwood edged its crown over the plateau. She saw the tips of Wellesley's circle of stones.

She had avoided looking up close, but now it very size demanded examination. She passed the first stone and finger-traced a rusty streak across its golden belly. Its shoulder was higher than her head. Other slabs of the same daunting size marched in a slow arc and met far away.

In the center of the smaller, lightning-scorched circle, a trio of low stones lay flat, like waist-high altars. Or no, she decided; by the look of them they predicted the equinox. She walked over for a better look. From the westernmost stone she sighted along a dark groove. She straightened and circled; leaned against the eastern end of the slab as she watched the morning clouds turn pale. To the north the circle dipped into a gully down the slope toward The Arm. The cottonwood stood within the dip, so near to the edge that its roots must overhang the water. She watched the virgin sunlight lower itself onto its crown. Her hand touched something sticky.

She jerked before she looked at what she felt, already disgusted. The dark streak in the groove splayed down the face of the stone; the ground beneath it was dark.

She willed herself to stay calm, to contain all her outrage for the cruelty of Wellesley's obvious sacrifice and to Clive's mount. She willed herself to listen for a bird or a breeze.

And she seemed to float upward with the sun into the sharp air. Angles steepened. Colors became livid. Scents were acrid. Her skin was the sheerest tissue, porous to light. Up and up higher, peaceful now, her crossed arms comfortable and relaxed because she was finally resigned to the weird, despite the evil of the stone altar. She floated and rose until she could see the long slabs of The Arm's golden opposite cliff, then the lapis lazuli water at its deep base reflecting the sky.

Eerie buzzing commenced, as if from bees. The buzz grew and roared, and the chapparel trembled beneath her floating feet. She spun gently in mid-air toward the sound, toward the sun.

But the sun was overhead now in the tip-top apex of the sky. And she saw a giant dragon’s steep descent over Dustin's pointed, glass-ended house, and saw the dragon land in a fury of dust and flung rocks where the sluggish twin creeks, Navajo and Kaibito, offered the last of their snowmelt to the small dock and the water in The Arm. The roar was the dragon's thundering heart. The beast rippled its flanks and glowed from inside, blood-red and yellow and black, blending and shifting. Its maw opened on gleaming metal devices as erect and dedicated as teeth. The teeth grew and acquired points. They reached for her. She would be crushed and torn apart.

"Enough!"

The colors dulled. The vision faded. Naomi again stood in midsummer dawn and felt the morning chill. She uncrossed her arms and headed away from the altar, toward the first monstrous stone. A coyote's tail whisked into the scrub.

Thirty-nine

A week later, during dinner time at home, Naomi smelled fur. She was tired to her emotional bone. Clive's cruelty on the mesa and Wellesley's blood-stained stone had sapped almost the last of her strength. She treasured every uneventful day with a sense of hairbreadth escape.

By now she recognized Stan Mitchell, the boy Wellesley had mentioned. He was a very tall blond, maybe seventeen, a muscular college senior and fascist punk whose puerile reports, typed by Jeannie's Typing Service, were those of a functional illiterate. Naomi reasoned that he attended college on an athletic scholarship.

Clive teased Wellesley. "So how is Stan?" he asked, straight-faced.

Wellesley's space was threatened. "Fine," she snapped, and slapped refried beans onto fry bread.

"That's what Roxanne told everyone after lunch." Wellesley blinked, stared, and colored. "She loves him, mom," Clive said sweetly.

Splat! Wellesley's messy dinner covered his face. His chair went over backward; the girl was all over him.

"Peace!" Naomi yelled, and pulled the twins apart.

She told herself she was secretly amused. For nearly an hour. That's when the fight resumed and Clive's swamp-thang roar echoed all the way to Naomi's loom beside the fireplace. When she burst into his room, Clive and Wellesley were throttling each other. Something sizeable and long slithered behind Clive's outsized armchair. Naomi, betrayed and aggrieved‒and conscious that she was feeding from their anger‒seized and hurled their bodies against walls. All of her life, her tears had never made a sound; they didn't now, but they drowned her voice until it was soft.

"That's it," she whispered. She swallowed and more loudly said, "That's the end. Out. Both of you. Out of the house. I'll be your mother, but I'm not a zookeeper."

Clive straightened from the wall where he'd been flung. "What?"

Still quiet, Naomi said, "Get out of my house." Neither twin responded. "I'll pay your cab fare into town and rent a couple of rooms in The Downtowner. That motel on San Francisco. That's all. That's it. It's over."

Wellesley grabbed her restless hair, twisting and shoving it under her collar. "Where do we go tomorrow?" she demanded. "Give up college? Go to dad's? I don't think so!"

"What you think doesn't count. Get out of Clive's room. Pack."

She headed for the doorway. She was dying; every soft spot in her psyche was collapsing, imploding in one hellish, destructive, all-encompassing ache. She knew just one thing; she would not continue.

"Mom!" Clive screamed.

Naomi whirled. Wellesley's fingers slashed the air by her mother's eyes. The girl's throat was swollen with passion, her mouth a rictus. The snake behind the armchair reappeared.

"By the power..."

Up to that moment, Naomi might have forgiven the twins. Half an hour's cooling-off period, an apology, a promise, might have restored them to their mother. But she hit her daughter. She hit her above the heart; hit her with all the strength in her animal-strong doubled fists, with all her pent frustration, her grief, her fury. The girl, six-foot-three to Naomi's five-foot four, dropped.

"Jesus! Mom!" Clive blurted, and knelt to help his unconscious sister.

Naomi no longer felt like crying; all her feeling had dried to dispassionate, uncaring clarity of purpose. "She'll recover; her kind always does. Call that cab before I bring Coyote against you and make him rabid."

Clive dialed. He was crying like a baby.

***

Of course Naomi's anger didn't last, although the twins spent a week in the motel. Dustin was their intermediary. He achieved the truce that after a while grew into a wary living arrangement.

Before the twins were allowed to return Naomi explained to him, "I think it was those two years of peace. I think I was fooled by it, and that their fight that night blind-sided me."

Dustin, sympathetic, pulled the straight face he used to conceal teasing. "You used to handle that sort of thing with perfect aplomb." She looked at him with a question. "I think you just went soft; got out of shape."

Naomi snorted. "That's the damn truth," she said.

Months passed before she and the twins enjoyed each other again. Sometimes their fear of her made Naomi want to weep. At other times she woke in a cold sweat at the sound of their step in the hall.

Forty

By the time Naomi reached forty and the twins were fourteen she was a successful businesswoman but an emotional basket case. She relied on psi ability as an early-warning system. Of course, she called her insights into peoples' motives "intuition." When she was frightened, she called the alarmed voices and pervasive stench "projection." She ignored her continuing youth and the indoor breezes in her hair.

She accepted her coyote sightings, though. Illusion, attraction or coincidence, their visits were always a way-shower, a timely stimulus to caution or to action. She read all she could find about the animals and the Indian legends about them. She read what little she could find about the Coyote Way ceremonial. Still seeking peace, she bought land for a summer home at the wash she had first seen with Dustin. Coyote waited by the cottonwood and was even present when she first arrived with the realtor. She ignored him. On a still day you could hear the Little Colorado make its right-angle plunge at Grand Falls. The place was perfect for a hogan, and she built one with the twins.

Dustin said she was crazy, but helped her to do it right. He loaned her equipment and men for the heaviest work. Cursing the creaky winch, loading logs from the new pickup she bought for the purpose, shrieking and leaping back when they dropped, Naomi had the time of her life. The men knew her from her summer visits to the mesa; they laughed. The twins helped, but hated the heavy work; they pretended to invoke a Satanic curse on the machinery, swinging a censer, laughing and bawling fake Latin. Their father grinned and finally pitched in.

After the eight log walls were up and she had covered the roof with honest-to-god sod and had glued the dirt floor smooth with comfrey tea, Naomi leaned on the center post, looked up at the high beams coning toward where the smoke hole should have been but where a zinc stove pipe plugged the sky. After all the plans and sweat and skinned arms and legs and the fights with the twins, she laughed too. What a silly thing for an Anglo woman to do.

Except now her half-breed kids had a Navajo house of their own, and she had a place so alone and solitary and private and damn-all hers that she finally felt at home.

"Go exploring, kids," she told them, "I'm going to perform an ancient Anglo ceremony in here and get plastered." She broke the neck of a wine bottle against the door post and drank what remained.

She didn't get drunk, because she was never able to do that, but her pride did the same thing and she laughed all the way home until the kids started laughing too and Wellesley revoked all her curses. Dustin took them to the fanciest restaurant in town for duck á la orange and cherries jubilee.

When Naomi and the twins next went to the hogan, Wellesley used red window boxes filled with petunias to flank the door. Clive painted the door blue. They slept on platforms along the walls and brewed coffee and cocoa on the cast-iron stove. Naomi woke herself snoring. It was the only time they stayed there together.

Forty-one

The following April, right after her visit to Dustin during the Spring Break, Wellesley announced her first menses. Grandmother Grace had warned everyone of dire consequences if Dustin denied his daughter a full kinaaldá, the Navajo initiation into womanhood. Dustin's politic piety had okayed it. Wellesley swore she had to have the ceremony so she could Walk in Beauty and Become Empowered As a Woman. Naomi declared that kinaaldá was a lovely, inconvenient idea that drained everyone for days afterward and meant dropping everything for four days. Wanda laughed and claimed the girl was just a dumb teenager, but dead-right about the ceremony.

So Naomi called Dustin with the news, and he promised his men would clean Grace's old hogan while Naomi drove the twins north.

As the pickup jolted down the driveway Wellesley sat by the passenger door, silent, her eyes closed, her arms crossed over her chest, her lips moving.

"Are you all right, love?" Naomi asked.

"She's casting a spell," Clive said from the back seat. "She didn't get to finish it in the house."

"On someone else?"

Clive shrugged. "Yes."

"Sol, Osiris, Slain and Risen..."

Naomi smiled. "I thought she believed in Navajo Gods."

"She does. When she's at dad's, she's heavy into Coyote."

"I see."

Wellesley's arms rose until they brushed the headliner. "Isis, Apophis, Osiris..."

"Which of those Egyptians is Coyote?"

"She's serious, mom."

"So'm I."

"Mom!" Wellesley admonished, and returned to her spell. They turned north onto Highway 180. Naomi and Clive observed a more respectful silence.

They drove by an Old West trailer park, stopped at a signal, continued. The road eastward to Leupp Station came and went, and a long green meadow footing the blue-and-white San Francisco Peaks. For the hundredth time, Naomi guessed at and envied the people who lived in the low house between meadow and forest. They would be serene, she felt, and fun-loving. They would measure time in months or seasons, not days. They would stock up on food in order to avoid leaving their beloved home.

"Done," Sly announced.

The truck hit the last grade before lowering onto the Coconino Plateau.

"Whom are you working on, love?" Naomi asked.

"A friend's uncle. His metabolism is bad."

"How will you know whether it works?"

"His belly won't hurt, and his food will make something more than shit."

"I see."

"You're patronizing her, mom," Clive charged.

A big sedan waddled into the highway from the road to Sunset Crater. Naomi braked, slewed left and missed it.

"Tourist fucker!" Sly shouted through the open window.

Clive slid her a look. "Not very spiritual," he observed.

"Time and place for everything, doofus."

"You're supposed to be extra powerful today because you began to menstruate. You gotta watch who you curse."

"I am extra powerful today, bro. Watch your tail."

"Riiight."

"Restrain your foul mouth, Sly," Naomi ordered.

"Sorry, mom. Must have been dat ole debbil DNA." In the silence that followed, Sly grew thoughtful. She said, "No kidding, I do want this ceremony. But Grandma needs for me to go through it. Why?"

"I couldn't say. Your grandmother and I operate on two very different wavelengths."

"Yeah. She used to think you were after dad's money."

"Hunh."

"Now she just doesn't know how to come close."

This heartened Naomi, which surprised her. "You think so?"

"Sure."

"Sure," Clive agreed. "You should ask her for advice, mom."

"Hunh."

"Yeah," Sly said. "Or really go after dad; she wants you two to be married, now."

"Nonsense."

"Really, mom." Wellesley sounded serious. "She says you and dad have grown alike, and it's true. The way you talk? Your rhythm? And you use the same phrases, the same irony. You even walk like Grandma Grace."

Naomi said nothing.

"Are you embarrassed, mother?" Clive asked.

Naomi could not have described what she felt. "No."

"You love him a lot, don't you?"

"I always have."

"Not like just a friend, either."

Her words shocked her, they came out so full of feeling. "I'd die to save that man one moment of pain."

Dead volcanoes rose from vast, snow-patched pastures. The road humped toward Cameron like an inch-worm, and as slowly.

Forty-two

Naomi was tense and stayed that way through the whole ceremony. Snow lay everywhere on the mesa. Grace's icy hogan was small, crowded, and had a blanket for a door. The singer and many of the guests eschewed deodorant. The hand-woven rugs spread on the floor got muddy and were strewn with cigarette ashes. People showed up whom Naomi had never met. She understood maybe half of the Navajo talk. She was rebuffed for being white.

Grace had made all the preparations, so she went ahead and performed the mother's traditional tasks without consulting Naomi. Naomi had studied kinaaldá hard for this occasion, and attended one held for Wanda's daughter. Now, she squatted just inside the hogan and watched and muttered, evil-eyed and jealous.

Grace combed Wellesley's hair and tied it into a ponytail with a strip of fur: mink, from God knew where. She dressed the girl in a velvet shirt and a gathered skirt that Naomi had long ago sewn for the occasion. Smirking in Naomi's direction, the grandmother loaded Wellesley with pounds of her own turquoise jewelry. Then she massaged her as a symbolic molding of the body on a rug of Ganado Red worth a new pickup.

Wellesley was either rapt in religion or enjoying the women's rivalry; she did not favor either with so much as a look. From near the center-post of the dark hut she faced east to bless all comers as they entered, giving everyone a gentle lift from under the ears. Boys and girls, Anglo and Native American, had lined up too. Clive was first in line, self-conscious and joking with the Anglos. One of them, Naomi noted, was Stan Mitchell.

The time came for Wellesley's first run. Perhaps a dozen adolescents were gathered in the hollow east of the hogan door; they would race with Wellesley, encourage her, maintain her morale in the unlikely event she got tired. Before she left she murmured with her eyes closed, then lifted the blanket at the door and headed east. Stan ran next to her. Clive, whooping, grabbed a pony and rode madly after them. A massive, slow-looking boy gawked. A troubadour sat on a rock and strummed a guitar, gathering children too small to keep pace.

Naomi shivered and watched from before the hogan door, deliberately blocking Grace's view. Innocent Dustin, dressed in a black velvet shirt and wearing all his turquoise for the occasion, joined her and stood four-square beside her with his arms crossed; the traditional Navajo, even to the bun of hair at the nape of his neck.

"She's so young," he said.

"Our little girl," Naomi agreed sweetly. "I know just how you feel."

Dustin reproved her irony: "I didn't expect to feel like this."

The runners cleared the hollow and disappeared over its rim. Still without moving from the doorway, Naomi smiled up at him. "I hear you're giving a big dinner tonight."

Dustin explained at leisure, still oblivious. "The Hopi suit over the joint-use territory is important. I want to get people together here and talk sense. Do you mind?"

"I'll be interested to see you in action."

Grace snapped from behind them, "You've done that."

Naomi blushed. Dustin looked puzzled. Grace was busy with something.

The chief singer's voice rose in English, also too loud. "I don't want no Anglo in here messing up my ceremonial. I am sincere when I sing. That girl's mother is not sincere. She's just trying to be a big-shot liberal. So she can't be in here. The others I asked to sing with me feel the same way."

Someone, not Grace, gave a placating murmur.

Dustin said, "Ignore him, Naomi. He's old."

"Isn't he in charge?"

"Only up to a point."

"Grace doesn't want me in there, either."

"Mother’s just excited."

"But she doesn't want me in there."

Clive thundered up and reined his heaving pony so hard the animal reared. Slush flew.

"I want a rodeo for my birthday," he demanded.

"I'm talking to your mother, Clive."

"I can see that! Can I have a rodeo for my birthday?"

Naomi was indignant: "Clive, behave!"

"This is not the time to ask for expensive presents," Dustin said quietly. "Go to the stable and rub down that horse."

"Sly gets a ceremony and a feast. I want a rodeo."

"Clive." It was Dustin's emphasis and the Navajo he spoke, not his volume. Naomi's head snapped around to observe the man's annoyance.

Clive was abashed. "Yes, sir." He turned his mount and headed for the barn.

Naomi felt it was her turn to mediate. "Dustin, he's being left out as much as I am. Wellesley is queen for a day."

"He knows better than to act like a baby."

"He's only fourteen. He doesn't look Navajo like Wellesley does, so he's being locked out."

Dustin shook his head and turned away. "That's no excuse, Jeannie."

"And a rodeo would be fun, don't you think?"

"We'll talk about it later."

That first run, ordinarily a five-minute affair, took half an hour. When Wellesley returned, everybody was free for the rest of the morning. Dustin went to his lab. Grace flounced by Naomi with Wellesley, instructing her in Navajo too fast and low for Naomi to understand. She went to pout in her pickup and sipped from her emergency flask of tequila. Then she went to her guest room and called Wanda to see how business was doing. Business was doing so well they needed another couple of typists.

Frustrated, Naomi left the house and angled past the pens of livestock, then the lab, and downhill. Late snow crunched and her boots slithered over stones. Black-limbed scrub climbed the dome on her left. Across The Arm, Tasi Skizzi lifted its finger into the sky.

The dock and shed were set where Navajo Creek met Kaibito Wash. Dustin's boat dangled from a winch and a big launch, probably a politician’s, was at the end of the dock. The shed was a board-and-tarpaper thing for life jackets, rope, and barrels of gasoline, but it would be warmer than the freshening wind.

A girl's laugh came; it was mocking, not pretty. Naomi paused, thinking it came from the shed, then realized it came from behind her and echoed against the cliffs. She went into the shed and dug her hands into her armpits for warmth. The wind followed her through the open door so she burrowed between the gasoline drums to escape it.

One of them near the wall had been painted white. On its stenciled flank three pairs of horns sprouted from a common core and were circled in red: a biohazard warning. Naomi sniffed. She smelled the sweet-sick odor of Peakspore.

She dodged out the door, ran, stopped to vomit in some reeds, and continued to run. The girl's ugly laughter rasped across her shoulders. She ran harder, faster, along the cliff-edge of the rising dome and between the tall boulders.

The triple cottonwood, the tree impossible on the Berkeley campus in 1965 but real enough to cut her fingers and shelter her from Coyote, enfolded her with its trunks. Its boles were smooth, mottled with rough patches of old bark. Her arms and back braced against it as they had done before. And this time it was real. She looked over the bluff at the inlet, then all the way around. Wellesley's circle of boulders loomed behind her.

She lowered her arms. She took deep breaths until her panic was gone.

By the time she dragged Dustin to the shed to prove her claim, she was calm and ready to listen. The barrel was at the wall, behind many others; visible but impossible to reach without a lot of grunting and sweating. Wary, Dustin regarded it from just inside the door.

"I have no explanation, but I'm sure it's empty," he said. "I'll have it removed right after the ceremony. I'll open it up, just to be sure. Believe me, Naomi..." His absent-minded use of her proper name was a sign of his abstraction; he seemed to hate Peakspore. "...that barrel's in here by mistake. My new man must have thought it belongs here. We don't see many biohazard warnings up here, so he wouldn't know..."

"But Dustin, I smelled..."

"Jeannie, it can't be Peakspore. It must be a barrel I used for one of its derivatives. I emptied them all and welded them shut to contain the fumes, but maybe this one sprang a leak."

Naomi sighed. "All right."

By the time she realized the barrel was filled with Wellesley's Peakspore, ready for transport to her client, it was too late.

Forty-three

Dustin was so important that the visitors to the feast began to arrive at noon for that night's doings. Pickups and horses and even a horse-drawn wagon churned the mud in front of his house. Smoke from cooking fires streaked south, carried downhill by cold air. Horse races began behind the bunk house. Grace and Dustin met and greeted the important guests, Navajo and Hopi officials in three-piece suits. Lesser lights were assigned to camp spots. Every guest brought a gift; corn meal, mutton, lard or coffee; some, a can of fruit. Wellesley hung back, silent but visible, and claimed the attention she felt was her due. Toward Naomi she was strained, complaisant and preoccupied. She spoke willingly only to Grace.

Naomi stopped trying to mingle and went to her guest room. She paced. She smelled coyote and heard voices. She drank coffee as she bathed. The stench increased. The voices grew louder. She found aspirin in her purse, swallowed two of them without water, and replaced her purse in the dresser drawer. The antique dresser's stench of ammonia was like wind from an outhouse, or a coyote. She held her breath when she opened another drawer for underwear.

As she stood in her slip, struggling with her pantyhose, Clive walked in unannounced. Any other time she would have been amused. "Out!" she shrieked.

"Mom, there's some guys..."

"Get out!" She abandoned her pantyhose and straightened with one nylon leg bunched at her knee, the other dangling.

Clive faltered, backed and blushed. "Sorry. I'll tell Grandmother."

Naomi plumped onto the wide bed and stared at the closed window drapes. "God damn what a day," she breathed.

At the banquet, Grace insisted she would serve people rather than sit down with the guests, so Dustin put Naomi formally at his left. She should have known names and backgrounds; she should have been impressed at the number of Hopis at the table. One of them, suited and young-old looking, tried to catch her eye and she smiled back. She had seen Dustin with him earlier; she couldn't place him. She did recognize Navajo Chairman MacDonald, and the ancient chief singer, who now wore the uniform of a tribal policeman and chain-smoked unfiltered Camel cigarettes.

She was struck most of all by the timeless, tribal atmosphere of the room and the formal manner of the guests. She fantasized that she was at a barbarian feast circa, say, the eighth century; Hrothgar's, maybe. At her back was Dustin's great stone fireplace, its blaze high, and the flames paved the log walls of the room with gold. The wagon-wheel chandelier, fifteen feet above the "U" of trestle tables, taxed the generator's capacity and dimmed the light. Fifty seated guests served themselves mutton stew from great ceramic bread bowls spaced along the tables. Wellesley, Clive and Grace prowled like servants and replenished coffee urns from graniteware percolators. Outside, a constellation of campfires lit the falling ground; Beowulf's followers. And the shaman-policeman; he sat at Dustin's right, his wrinkles like barrancas in the raked light.

In the end, Naomi had risen to the occasion. Her dark hair was in a modest bun at the nape of her neck. She wore long garnet velvet and masses of silver rain. She was edgy, but poised and beautiful.

Clive introduced himself to guests, spoke to the friendly Hopi. Sly was silent. Dustin talked to the shaman, to Chairman MacDonald seated at her left, then right again to the Hopi‒where had she seen him?‒farther down the table.

"How're you doing now, mom?"

Clive bussed Naomi and wedged a stool between her and the Chairman, who, thank God, was looking elsewhere. The boy grabbed a granite-ware bowl and plate from a pile in mid-table and helped himself to stew.

"Better, love, and more civil. I'm sorry about earlier; I had a headache."

"No sweat. I talked to Grandmother." He smiled and bussed her again. "Pretty big party, isn't it? It looks like the whole nation's here."

Naomi’s smile grew brighter than she intended because of the extra kiss. "You having fun?"

He nodded and began to eat. "Everyone I know is outside, though. I'll just catch some food and go, if you don't mind. Thanks for the Stetson; you didn't have to get me a present."

"I wanted to surprise you."

Clive had already emptied his plate and was rising to go. Naomi caught his sleeve.

"Who are those Anglo kids in the kitchen?"

The boy's face darkened, then cleared. He climbed away from the stool and towered above her, scanning the guests. "Kids from college and high school. One of them wants to buy stock." His jaw muscle bunched.

"Stock? Dustin doesn't sell stock. Where's he from, anyhow?"

"Winslow. I saw Sly kiss him, so I came to your room."

"And you broke it up." He nodded. "You don't like him, do you?"

"He's all right, I guess. In a herpetarium. I’ll keep an eye on him."

Dustin interrupted from over Naomi's shoulder, soto voce. "Where is Wellesley?"

Clive scanned the room again. "In the kitchen, maybe. I'll check it out. See you."

Dustin continued to talk, so close to Naomi's ear that it tickled. "He's going to 'reason' with that boy about Wellesley. It might work."

Naomi faced him to escape the tickle and nearly bumped his nose with hers. Dustin lowered his arm from the back of her chair. It flustered her; pleased her. "Did he really want to buy stock?" she asked. "He didn't know that you don't sell animals?"

Dustin nodded. "He came with a cashier's check. His folks will let him use some land. I don't think he knew about the ceremony." He cut fry bread prissily with knife and fork, watching her from the corner of his eyes and almost smiling. "Grazing land. His friends came along to manage the sheep."

"Who bought the cashier's check for the boy?"

Sly and Grace emerged from the kitchen with trays of pies and began placing them along the tables. The singer signaled to Wellesley, and she nodded. It was time to resume the ceremony.

Dustin said, "I don't know. I didn't take it. I told him he'd better rethink his career if he doesn't know where to get sheep."

"Would you help him if he had ewes?"

"Not if he doesn't think more carefully. I'll talk to him. Show him Old Thunder. Maybe tomorrow morning, before things get going."

Now it was Naomi who was amused. "You mean you'll take those boys trotting all over hell's half acre in the arctic sunrise, right after Wellesley's run, don't you? Looking for that god-awful animal. Then you'll 'find' him loose near the house. And invite them to inspect him."

Dustin looked innocent. "Jeannie! That wouldn't be right!"

"But you'll do it. And you won't even offer those boys a cup of coffee."

"You impugn your host!"

"You're a savage, Dustin. All you need is some shields hung along these walls, and this feast could be right out of Hrothgar's Hall."

Dustin smiled.

Forty-four

Naomi placed a kitchen chair just outside the hogan door and wrapped one of her own sage-green weavings around her plaid Pendleton jacket and jeans. She glared at Grace as the haughty grandmother sniffed, squeezed past her, and entered.

"I am the mother," Naomi declaimed in horribly accented Navajo.

Visitors, clustered behind her chair, got silent. The mysterious Hopi whispered to a tall Anglo boy with a guitar. Then Dustin, watching with the Hopi, spoke imperiously in Navajo. The blanket on the door folded back and Naomi took her proper place inside with her daughter. She knelt, picked up a stone mano with both hands, and began grinding corn. After a while Wellesley removed her borrowed jewels and put them on a special basket. Then the girl rolled herself into some blankets and fell asleep on the sheepskins that covered her mattress.

Next day, after the run at dawn and a few hours' sleep, Naomi's hands wouldn't work and her shoulders still ached from another bout of grinding corn. She knew she had stayed awake all night, because she remembered light in the east when Wellesley left the hogan. In the kitchen for breakfast she cradled a coffee mug in her palms and felt the ache begin to dissolve.

"It's time for the next race."

She turned. Dustin was standing in the doorway to the living room. "Thanks. I guess I'd better get out there."

"It's not necessary," he said.

"It is now."

He was stony-faced and formal, but she knew he was only embarrassed about her scene earlier. "Thanks for intervening, Dustin."

"I should have spoken earlier."

"This is between Grace and me."

"It's between the tribe and you. I didn't realize that."

"No fair?"

"Yes."

She wanted to hug him. She smiled and ventured, "So now it's us against them, if that's what you mean."

He nodded and sat down across from her at the table. "If you say so." He moistened a finger and began picking up crumbs of coffee cake from a plate. A new thought crossed his face. "You can repay me."

"Of course."

"I want your blood." He glanced up. She set down her mug, waiting for the punch line. "A sample," he said.

"You doing workups now, doctor?"

"Yes." He was serious. "There are a couple of new avenues of research I want to explore. One of them, I don't know how pertinent to the children's condition it is, but..." He emphasized the "but" and went from the merely serious into his professional mode. Naomi remembered it from Berkeley.

"As you know, we aren't certain of the thymus gland's function. It's large at birth, about the size of the infant's heart, and then shrinks to vestigial size in the adult."

"Yeah."

"Well, not in the Peakspore sheep. Not until they are dying."

"What?"

"My sheep. They mature within two months, live approximately twelve years, have twin births exclusively, and," he paused, calculating, "one day they stop following. Anything. They can't be herded; they stand still and wait. To die. Takes about an hour. So far, I've caught two of them in the act, and cut them open right away."

Naomi was lost. "What? How long has‒I mean, do you mean‒I mean, the thymus? It stays big for their whole life-span?"

"Yes. But by the time one dies naturally, there it is; vestigial. But it only happens in the animals that got a full dose of my reduced compound, or in their second-generation young."

Naomi said, "I guess you just found this out, right? I mean, you must have known how they die."

"The first-generation animals are just now reaching old age. Up to now, I've only dissected lambs, so naturally‒well, if I had slaughtered at least one ewe, I'd have noticed it. It never occurred to me." This embarrassed him; he went back to the cake crumbs.

After a minute Naomi said, "Yeah. How many have you examined?"

He didn't answer. Still picking at crumbs he said, "The anterior lobe of the pituitary regulates skeletal growth." Naomi nodded, trying to keep up. "Covered with tumors. The whole gland. From about a year old."

"Yuck."

"It works well enough to make large animals, but beyond that normal activity it seems to go haywire."

"It just keeps working?"

"It keeps on doing something. And grows those tumors. Of course, the posterior lobe that increases blood pressure..."

"Lord."

"Yes. Somehow, the glandular activity ties in with blood type and serotonin; I don't know how. The twins made the connection of Peakspore to blood-type, remember? I was already looking into that."

"Yeah, I remember."

He paused and half-lifted a breakfast roll. He put it down again, still regarding the table. "Have you done any reading in the field? Recently?"

"A little into brain chemistry," she said. "Serotonin is a vasoconstrictor. People with blood-type "O" hang onto serotonin better than others."

"My sheep have almost none. Anywhere. A trace in their blood, none discoverable in their tissues. Not in the brain; not even the midbrain." He had all but forgotten her presence, circling his forefinger on the plate of rolls. "There should be more. So I took blood samples from the old stock..."

"Even Thunder?"

He flicked her a glance. "Especially Thunder. His serotonin level, and that of every animal I treated with the original formula, is even lower than my new sheep's."

"But serotonin is an antidepressant."

"That's the current wisdom."

Now Naomi shared Dustin's repressed excitement. "What does it mean? Is it connected to violence?"

"It’s possible. Maybe it's just part of the genetic changes we passed on. Its lack wouldn't produce our increased stamina, though, and I doubt it's connected to longevity. Maybe it's just the glands." He picked up a roll and took a bite, still acting casual.

"It's a start, though, isn't it?" Naomi prompted. "If you can isolate the cause‒I mean, if you can learn whether serotonin is being destroyed, or is just missing to begin with‒maybe a simple antidepressant..." She paused, lost in hope. "Dustin, this is exciting! When do you want my blood? Now? Can we go do it now?"

"Later. I'll have to make Peakspore in order to continue, and I won't do that unless you're with me. You have to know how much I make, and know that I get rid of it."

"Thank you."

"So I'd like to plan the work for this summer, when you have a few weeks to spend up here."

"Gladly! Maybe the twins can help."

"...Perhaps."

As they left the house he took her swollen hand and they walked that way downhill in front of knots of observant people. The boy with the guitar began to play "Hail to the Chief." When the runners came back Naomi willed herself to grind more corn. That evening Clive massaged Bengué into her arms so she could sleep.

The fourth morning, Naomi helped Grace clean the hogan while Wellesley ran. The blankets shaken, placed on the floor and straightened, she lifted an empty lamp from its hook and began to remove the glass chimney to fill the well. The chimney fell from her cramped fingers onto a pile of sheepskins.

"You all right? You're shaking," Grace asked.

"Yes, I'm all right."

There was a pause. "You know a lot about kinaaldà."

"Thank you, Grace."

"We better go in and get dressed up."

It marked a truce. When Dustin saw them head for the house together he was breaking up ground for the big pit they would use later to bake the corn cake. He straightened and dropped his pickaxe to watch, but he didn't say anything. Later, when the fire was in the pit and breakfast was ready, he stared hard to see Naomi in a full velveteen skirt and his mother's concho belt around her waist. She simpered.

Later, in the hogan, Wellesley helped mix the batter in one of several washtubs, breaking up lumps of cornmeal with her hands and murmuring. Naomi kept busy with an eggbeater at another tub. She hoped Wellesley’s murmur wasn't another invocation to Egyptian gods, but thought it probably was.

Wellesley's rings, all gifts for the ceremonial, lay in a basket on the floor beside her. One of them flashed in the weak light coming through the door. Naomi bent for a better look. It was a diamond solitaire.

"Where did you get that?" she demanded, and fingered the ring.

Wellesley glanced at it and shrugged. "I forget."

Grace looked up sharply. "What?"

Naomi could hardly speak, she was so furious. "It's not turquoise. It's not traditional," she accused.

Wellesley continued searching for lumps, her hands invisible in the batter. "So?"

Grace walked to the basket, peered, then took the ring from Naomi. "Biligaana wedding shit," she snorted, and put the ring into her apron pocket. Wellesley reached for it; batter dripped onto the valuable rug. "You'll get it back later, missy."

Wellesley didn't argue: "Yes, grandmother."

"Shee-it!" Naomi muttered. "Thing must have cost ten thousand dollars." Through the open doorway she could see Stan; he was playing Frisbee with Clive, running, grunting, leaping, intense enough for war. She glanced at Grace. The same sense of injury glittered in the older woman's molten eyes.

When the dough was in the pit to bake, Naomi cornered Dustin. She led him away from the hogan, still quivering with outrage.

"Wellesley has a diamond engagement ring," she said.

"Engagement ring? No."

"Yes! It's a solitaire, at least a couple of carats. An Anglo engagement ring!" Dustin said nothing. "Well? I think it's from that boy Stan." He sighed and hooked his thumbs into the belt loops of his jeans. "The stupid fool who was looking to buy stock!"

"We'll address the problem after the ceremonial."

"No, we will not wait! She's too young to even think about engagements and marriage! Where did she get the idea that she could...and where did he get enough money for that thing, too? He's just a kid himself!"

"We're almost finished with the four days."

"And Clive's done a one-eighty, sweet-mouthed and busy playing the perfect host. He's talking to those boys as if they're buddies! Even if Wellesley doesn't have any sense, he might at least..."

"It's almost over, Naomi. Calm down."

"Calm down! God damn it Dustin, she's accepted an engagement ring! She's just a baby! What are we going to do with her?"

"We'll address the problem after the ceremonial."

"Like hell!"

"Wellesley thinks she's a woman."

"Shit!"

"I love it when you talk dirty."

Forty-five

Three guest singers entered the gloomy hogan soon after eight that evening, a long time before the ceremony. Two of them knew it would be a strenuous night; they rolled themselves into blankets and napped. The third one smoked a cigarette, his wrist cocked on a scissored knee, the smoke rising to the smoke hole in feathery whorls.

Grace started a fire under the hole in a flimsy dime-store barbecue. Naomi took a seat across from Dustin midway along the angling wall, her feet straight ahead and her hands on her thighs. Grace sat on her left. They watched Wellesley. The girl slept, oblivious and lantern-lit, in the shadowy back of the hogan. Her hands were crossed over her chest like a sacrificial heroine.

It was after eleven when the chief singer entered and instructed the guest singers. Five more singers had come, wedging themselves into the crowd. Wellesley had wakened and sat huddled in a blanket on her mattress. The singer blessed the hogan with pollen. Wellesley rose and circled the fire clockwise and pollen pouches were passed so that everyone could bless themselves. The hogan was sealed until time for Wellesley's final race.

A dozen interminable songs began, then a dozen more, then there was another round of blessings from the pollen pouch. Everyone was quiet. Naomi couldn't tell whether it was from reverence or fatigue. Free singing began. Midnight came and went, and the hogan got warm. Knit caps and down vests came off. Children stopped playing around the bonfire outside and found their beds. By two in the morning, when it was time to eat, Naomi felt Indian. The singing was hypnotic, the only thing in the world except for the small fire by the center pole and the still flames in the lanterns. Naomi watched a single flame and, without realizing it, she leaned against Grace's shoulder. Peace bloomed. She had never felt stronger, more clear-headed, or more certain of everything.

The days of strain and little sleep had affected Wellesley; she stared at the singer and moved her lips. Her blanket slipped from one shoulder.

"Lift that blanket," the Chief Singer told her, fishing mutton from the bowl in his hand. "I just do not do this for something to do."

Wellesley blushed and straightened the blanket, but did not stop her murmured chant.

Dustin was more sympathetic. "Try to stay awake, Wellesley."

Naomi crossed to her daughter and placed a mug in her hand. "Here's some coffee, love. I put a lot of sugar in it."

Wellesley's fingers were like ice. She shook her head. "I think some fresh air. Can we open the door for a while?"

"No," the Chief Singer said.

The singing resumed after the dishes were cleared. Grace, intent, fingered her big squash-blossom necklace and rocked forward and back when the singer did. Dustin aped his mother, too tired to hide his reverence. The old singer's wail was replaced by a lower, stronger one, then another one after that as the guest singers took their turns.

Toward morning Grace began pounding soapweed for the shampoo. When Wellesley washed her hair in the yucca basket her movements were wooden and her face was pale. She was never sick; Naomi worried. If it were possible, she would have called off the final race. She sent a distressed look to Dustin, who frowned and shook his head.

At four o'clock Wellesley left the hogan stumbling. Clive and the Anglos boys followed her, then were grudgingly allowed to enter the hogan for the final song when she returned. The girl sat on the mattress panting, watching the smoke hole, and chanting silently behind the singing. Pollen pouches were sent round again. Everyone took a pinch.

Everyone except Wellesley. Rigid, she continued to watch the smoke hole. Seconds passed. Murmurs rose from people seated around the walls. The Chief Singer went to her, dodging outstretched legs. His arm was extended to offer the blessing. He stopped.

"Her mouth is foaming," he said.

Dustin and Naomi almost collided as they leapt to her. Naomi knelt and slipped her arm beneath her daughter's shoulders. There was no softness under the blanket. Pink froth oozed from the corners of her lips and dribbled from her chin.

"Dustin! Oh, God!"

"Wellesley!" He gathered his outsized daughter into his arms and rose, scanning the tense faces, the half-risen bodies. "Clive, take these people to the cake pit. Help your grandmother serve."

Clive rose. "Is she all right?"

Wellesley shuddered and went limp. Then she wrapped one arm around Dustin's neck and plowed her face into his shoulder. "Daddy?"

Dustin set her onto the floor, still holding her tight. "Yes, Wellesley. It's over."

"We're all here, Sly," Clive said.

Naomi doubted the efficacy of kinaaldá for unbelievers.

Forty-six

After Wellesley napped and returned all the finery, she drew Naomi aside. With a smile as big and glossy as a Vegas show-girl's she pressed her chest to Naomi's. It was meant to be a hug.

"Thanks, mom. I'm a woman, and I owe it all to you. I feel so empowered!"

Naomi disengaged herself. "Empowered?"

"I finally understand you, mom. Your womanhood. Fully. Really. As well as Grandma's. You're both such a big part of my being, you know. And now I have been doubly blessed, with the kinaaldá and my Divine Mother..."

Naomi's jangled nerves were about to snap. "Yes, the Divine Mother. Of course. And that engagement ring?"

"That ring?" Wellesley paused. Her voice resumed its edge of brass. "I just borrowed it, mom; that's all. It was a joke."

Naomi examined her, wondering how much to believe. "A dumb Anglo joke. Who loaned it to you?"

Wellesley colored. "Stanley," she said. "He said it was his mother's, and since the kinaaldá girl is supposed to look fertile and rich, it'd be all right to borrow something from a belagaana."

Dustin joined them. "Stanley?" he asked, and turned to Naomi. "Does he often carry his mother's diamonds?"

Wellesley said, "I don't know. I guess not." She turned to Naomi. "Maybe he wasn't joking? Maybe he just said that so I would wear it?"

"Why would he do that?"

"Maybe he's sweet on me. I gave it back to him."

Dustin wasn't satisfied. "Did mother return it to you?"

"Yes! I wouldn't steal it from her! She gave it to me right after the cake! Then I gave it to Stanley while she was there. She saw!"

"Did you invite that young man up here?" Dustin asked in a different tone.

Wellesley bowed her head. "I thought you wouldn't mind. He's my friend."

Naomi was indignant. "Your father doesn't sell stock, but you didn't tell him?"

Wellesley shrugged. "I made a mistake. I didn't know he'd bring all those other guys, either."

Impasse. Dustin stood with his arms crossed. Naomi tried to think of something to say without spitting. She left the twins with their father and made for Flagstaff as soon as it was decent.

Forty-seven

Grace phoned the next morning before dawn.

"You better come back up here, Jeannie. Something's going on."

"What? Who is this?" Naomi had been dreaming that her quilted cover was a wretched, stifling cave. She squinted toward the light that blushed the San Francisco peaks. "Is this Grace?"

"Yes. Something's going on with Wellesley and Clive, but their father won't pay no attention. You better come up here."

Naomi sat up. The room was cold and she couldn't find her robe. "What's going on?"

"Those boys have been hanging around your kids. Dustin sent them home, but they came back last night and he let them stay."

"I don't get it. The ones at the kinaaldá?"

"Yeah, those punky white boys. They're no good for your children. Wellesley snuck out and was gone most of the night, and I just bet it was with those boys. I would have stopped it, except for the lightning that came up bad about then. It was shooting just everywhere, the mesa and around Tazi Skizzi. But you better come back up; your kids don't listen to me any more, and their father's too easy on them. They say they'll run away if their friends can't stay."

"But what's it about? What are they doing?"

"It's hard to tell you; you better come up."

"Grace..."

"Now, listen, Jeannie. I wasn't nice to you for a long time, but you know you and I got along okay just now at the sing, and I wouldn't bother you over just nothing. Wellesley's a little crazy; I was hoping the kinaaldà would help. It didn't."

Thoughtful silence as Naomi, still sleep-fuddled, considered Sly in a magic stone circle during an unseasonable storm of lightning.

Grace resumed. "Wellesley is acting silly and giggling a lot, but she's not flirting. I know how she is when she's flirting. This is that high, big-shit laugh. And Clive's going around like her grown-up father and sore as a boil, but he won't let Dustin send those boys off and he won't stop talking to them. How'd your kids get to know trash like them, anyhow?"

"Damn." Naomi fished between the end of the bedstead and the covers and dragged her robe onto her lap. "Let me talk to Dustin."

"He's not up. He doesn't know I'm calling."

"Let me talk to him anyway. I'll say I have a spooky feeling or something."

"Okay."

There was a thump at the other end of the line and a long wait. Naomi squirmed into her robe and found her clumsy sheepskin slippers while she listened. The light outside turned whitish. She stumped into the kitchen, picked up the extension phone and began making coffee with the receiver between her ear and shoulder.

Dustin's voice was patronizing: "Yes?"

"Dustin? What's going on with the twins? This is Jeannie."

"Nothing is going on. Why?"

"I just got a funny...no. Sorry, Grace." Pause. "Your mother is worried about those boys that you let stay over, last night. She thinks Wellesley was practicing sorcery or something with them."

"Wellesley's friends are here, and yes they played witch, even when the storm came. Teenagers love melodrama. Clive doesn't like having the boys here, but he doesn't want me to throw them out. He's going to harangue them into weary stupefaction so they'll leave on their own."

Naomi shoved a coffee filter into the glass cone of her new Chemex. "That's not what Gracie says. She thinks you don't like it, either."

"It's nothing I can't handle. Grace is just being my mother."

There was an offended snort as Grace banged down her extension.

"But your mother has a lot of sense, and you know you spoil the twins. She's worried about those boys. I know Stan, and that hippy fool with the guitar; they're occasional customers of mine and I already know I don't trust them. But where do the rest of them come from?"

"Flagstaff, I suppose, or Winslow. They behave arrogantly, but they're only boys. There was nowhere else for them to spend the night. They'll leave soon. I'll see to it."

"All right."

Go!

"Would you like to speak to Wellesley or Clive?"

"No, that's all right. Will you bring them down tomorrow?"

"I'll let Clive drive the Ram. The work truck."

"All right."

GO!!

Forty-eight

It became a balmy day with snow to the north of downtown buildings and ice in the south gutters. Mid-terms were over and the temporary typists had gone. Wanda and Ione worked quietly. Maybe it would be all right, Naomi thought; maybe it would be a day for steady catch-up and casual talk.

"So how was the ceremony?" Wanda asked. The fluorescent light overhead threw afro curl-shadows across her deep-set eyes.

"All right. There was a political dinner too, with a big turnout. Some Hopis, even." Naomi stood before the bookcase behind her desk and sorted reports ready to be typed. "I'm giving Wellesley a week to catch up on her sleep."

"Well, the sing was worth it."

Ione, at the copy machine, asked, "Why is she tired?" She was a woman tan of hair and face and just as colorless in speech.

"The last day of the ceremony does it," Wanda explained. "You're up late for three nights, then on the fourth, you don't get any sleep. Every sunrise you have to run."

"Why?"

"Why stay up? Or why run?" Naomi asked. She hefted a report to her desk and found her starting place. It was an oral history of the Grand Canyon full of an old man's hoarded, and doubtless embroidered, memories.

"Both. Isn't the sing supposed to be for her health? I mean, to make her strong?"

Wanda said, "Not strong that way. More womanly."

"Oh." Ione was uncomfortable with implied sex. She watched the sliver of green light slide under the copier's document cover.

"No, not just that, either" Wanda said. "The sing was for Wellesley getting fecund, sure. But Navajo women have more to be than just sexy. The ceremony makes her aware of‒what, Naomi?‒ideal womanhood, I guess. Puts her on The Path."

"Oh." Ione took the copies to her station. "Spiritually mature."

"Close enough."

Naomi sat down and sipped coffee, making appointments for her paralegal and thinking about the drive to Dustin's. It would snow up there by mid-afternoon. Black ice would fill every dip and pothole.

"She called before you got here, Jeannie," Ione said.

Naomi jerked. "Called? Wellesley?" Ione nodded. "When? What time?" She set down her cup and stood, already reaching for her purse.

"About eight. Just when I opened the office."

"What did she want?"

"She didn't say. She'll call you later."

"When? This morning? It's already 9:30."

"Yes. This morning."

Naomi dialed Dustin's home. She let the phone ring fifteen times before she gave up, dithered, and decided. "I have to go back up there," she said.

"You think there's trouble?" Wanda asked.

The phone rang; Naomi grabbed it. "Jeannie's Typing."

It was Clive. "Mom? It's me. Can you come and get me?" His voice was as high and uncertain.

The stench of coyote became so quickly, overpoweringly everywhere that Naomi wondered why the other women didn't react. She forced her voice to sound casual. "Sure. What's up?"

"Wellesley went off with some kids, and I followed them. They screwed up dad's Ram though, and I'm stuck. In Page. I was trying to talk them out of it."

"Page?"

"Yeah. I'm at Basha's Market, but I don't have any money. Can you come?"

"Sure, if your dad can't. Where is he?"

"Splattered all over the ceiling. I mean no, he's not hurt or anything, just mad. Waiting for the cops. Anyway, I think he'd better stay home."

"Police?" Naomi inhaled. She sat down. "I don't get it, honey. You sound scared."

There was a lot of fumbling at the other end of the line. The voices reentered Naomi's head with a rush; "lambs" and "fire" and a chaotic mix of discreet words, making a horrible kind of sense. And the sound of keening from a great loss: Clive's loss; his fear.

"Calm down, darling. I'll be there as soon as I can drive up. Did Wellesley‒whose idea was it?"

"Hers. And Stan's. I already called dad. That's why he called the cops."

"Stan Mitchell?"

"He and Wellesley are going to get married. They have everything set."

"Good God."

Naomi tried to think, but couldn't for the stench and the din of Clive's fear.

She asked, "Do you know where they went?"

"I told dad, so he can have the Winslow cops head them off. I think they were going to Stan's uncle's."

"His uncle's?"

"Yeah. Mr. Mitchell."

Mitchell: Bayer-Mitchell. How could she ask? How could she have forgotten? Naomi swung, looking for help where there was none. Her purse hit her coffee mug and it slopped all over the old man's oral history.

Forty-nine

Naomi told herself to relax, but the drive to Page is a hundred and forty long, straight miles and the road at first was dry, so she rushed. The sky lowered and whitened like a marble ceiling. The road bottomed near Cameron and began to climb; Page flecked the edge of the sky. Basha's Market followed. Its large parking lot had a view of Lake Powell.

Clive folded himself into the truck as soon as she stopped.

"Dad just called. On the pay phone." All haste, he pulled off his gloves and shoved back his hood. He was a frightened boy; his fingers trembled, his lips were white. Naomi reached. He jammed his face into her neck and clung. "God I'm sorry, mom! I tried to stop them. I thought they'd listen to me. More than to you or dad, anyhow. But they just kept on! They wouldn’t stop and think!" He loosened his strangle-hold and pulled away, swiping at his nose with the back of his hand. "I wanted to help."

Naomi handed him a tissue from the back of her visor. "Yes," she soothed.

He went on as if he hadn't heard. "Last night it was that dumb ceremony in the circle. You know, Sly playing the Divine Mother. Looked stupid, with her hair whipping around and her waggling her arms at the sky. She was wearing that black bathrobe. And those guys laughed and egged her on like she was some kind of freak. You know."

"So far, it only sounds embarrassing," Naomi said.

"I guess you had to be there. All I know is, she slit that lamb's throat..." Naomi winced. "...and yelled, and this hairy bolt of lightning came down and sort of jumped from rock to rock, all around her. On top of the rocks, and just on the inside circle, you know? Awesome. I was behind one of them." He blew the tissue to pieces and grabbed another.

"Oh."

"Yeah. And that's not all. A deer or something; I don't know, you couldn't really tell because it was so dark. It came wandering along, and I guess Sly got mad. She made it climb up into that cottonwood..."

"She what?"

"She made that deer or whatever, maybe an antelope? I don't know. She made it climb the cottonwood like a squirrel, even with its long old legs. Then she made it jump down into The Arm. She drowned it." He shook his head, trying to deny it.

"Clive, deer can't climb trees. Neither can antelope."

"I know; we all knew it. The guys stopped laughing." He blew again. "Believe it." He smeared at his eyes with the damp tissue, right then left, and began to shred it with his fingers. "And now she's gone off with all of them. You must be worried sick."

"No," Naomi lied, "but I'm mad as hell. And if Wellesley drugged or hypnotized you all into believing that crap, I'm even madder. Are you all right? Otherwise?"

"Sure." Pause. The heater blew shredded tissue into his face. He picked at it, watching her from the corner of his eye. He stopped fidgeting. In a different voice he said, "Dad says the Highway Patrol got Stan and Wellesley out by Two Guns. He's gone to get her."

"Where?"

"To pick her up? I don't know. I guess to Winslow, and they'll hold her with Stan. They were alone; the other guys weren't with them anymore."

Snow began to fur the lights from the market and drift across the parking lot. Naomi wedged her hands between her thighs. The heater was loud.

"Do you know all their names?"

Clive sighed and slumped with his big knees propped against the dash. "A couple. The muscleman's called Herk, for Hercules, but his name's Dick Staple. Then there's Chris, the hippy who was playing the guitar. I don't know his last name."

"Does Stan spend a lot of time with them?"

"I haven't paid much attention."

"Come on, Clive!"

He tossed the soggy tissues into the bin between their seats. "I haven't, mom! You know how Wellesley was about her secret boyfriend."

"And you didn't snoop?" Naomi demanded, "Because I sure did."

"Well, maybe about Stan. Thanks for coming up for me."

"Yeah, sure. But about snooping. You found out about Stan's uncle."

"Yes, I found out about his uncle. Thomas Beyer-Mitchell is his name. Runs sheep out of Winslow." Clive jerked upright, on the edge of panic again. "Bayer! Is there any connection to that guy in Berkeley? The guy you ran away from?"

"God, love, of course there is! But take it easy!" Naomi crushed at her temples to squeeze out a headache. It didn't work. "Sorry; I looked him up, that's why I know. But what I mean is, you don't have to account for Wellesley’s action when she's wrong. And you don't have to be superman, either. It's hard as hell for me to live with."

Clive was watching the view north; parking lot, snow-scabbed sand and scrub, the lake behind the dam. "All right." Then, "Yeah."

"Okay." Naomi squeezed until her vision began to focus. "Here's what I figure: E. James Bayer-Mitchell shortened his name and became Dr. E. James Bayer, the man your father and I knew. Cornelius raised Stan while E. James was gone, and Stan uses just the 'Mitchell' for anonymity. Stan's another Peakspore kid, so when he picked up on Wellesley, he was just recognizing a kindred soul. Some time or other, Dr. E James told Cornelius and Stan about me and you two kids, about how valuable we would be to his research."

"That figures," Clive said. "She's visible, to say the least."

"About that time I showed you two kids the notes on Peakspore. Stanley isn't very intelligent, judging from the papers he’s had me type, but maybe he could get Wellesley to talk, and maybe he's smart enough to know a good thing when he sees it."

Clive was big-eyed. "Jesus!" he breathed, "I didn't think of all that."

Naomi was grim; "I'll bet you didn't. It's only a hypothesis, though." Her head began throbbing again. "I could kill something. How much of the formula do you remember? And tell me."

"All of it. I mean, I remember all the notes, and then the steps are just logical to get the result." Clive looked as miserable as he sounded.

"Does Wellesley?"

"Probably."

"Would she tell Stan? Would she make the stuff for him?"

Clive groaned from the bottom of his feet. "Probably. Do the police still want you?"

Naomi had no idea, but she was so mad and frustrated and hot from the god-damned heater she couldn't resist saying it: "Damn right."

Clive's head whipped away as if he'd been slapped. He unfolded from Naomi's truck and headed into the snow for his father's Ram.

"Oh God."

She followed him. The Ram's hood was up, its engine gathering the first wet flakes. Clive lowered it and ground down with his big hands to engage the latch.

"Clive! Christ, I'm sorry. I mean it, I'm really sorry. I didn't have to put it that way."

"It's the truth though, isn't it?" He wouldn't look at her.

"Maybe. I don't know. I mean that. But if they're still after me, and if‒you know, worst-case scenario‒it's not your fault. It's like I told your father once; for people like him, like us, there's no place to hide. You just have to do what you can, and give it all you've got. That's all you did, isn't it?"

Clive was watching the lake. "Yeah, and it wasn't enough. I should have told you what they were going to do. Or dad; he could have stopped them."

"And then we would have had to wait until Wellesley tried it again. She would have. Not just because she's Wellesley, but because she's young and knows everything, on top of making snakes come and conjuring up climbing ruminants. Because her glands are kicking in. Because she's got this blond hunk coming after her. See?"

Clive considered his hands, still shoving against the cold hood of the truck. "I guess so. You mean we're only human."

Naomi ventured a grin. "I hope so."

"Yeah, but does Dad think that? He's having a cow. He'll blame me for everything."

"Just at first, yes. He does that. But then he'll see reason. Like always." She waved at the big truck. "What's wrong with it?"

"They took the distributor cap. Give me a lift and I can get one from E-T Auto. They have Napa parts."

"We'll get some lunch first. After we fix the truck we'll go wait with Grandma Grace."

Clive finally looked relieved. "Right."

"But your grandmother doesn't know about Bayer, or the Peakspore, and this is no time to tell her."

"Right."

Fifty

Naomi, Grace and Clive waited and paced and drank cocoa until dark, seldom speaking. They said nothing at all about Wellesley. When Dustin brought her home she was cowed, big-eyed and girlish. He nodded toward her room; the girl ran.

"She's fine," he told them. He hung his jacket, then looped an arm around Clive's chest. "You did your best, son," he said. "Thanks."

Clive’s voice got thick. "Yeah. She really okay?"

"Physically."

Dustin had selected his words. "Just okay?" Naomi asked.

"Wellesley attacked an officer and I had to restrain her. She will stay here on the reservation until she is eighteen or be taken to the juvenile camp. Stan is estopped from seeing her."

Grace was complacent. She folded her hands on her belly under her breasts. "Did you learn a good lesson from all this Anglo business, son? I told you last night those boys were bad."

Dustin let Clive go. He massaged one hand with the other. "Yes, mother."

Clive was eyeing the hall door to his room. "If Sly's all right..."

"Sleep well, darling," Naomi said.

He bolted.

Grace, outraged, would not relinquish the floor. "Did she think the ceremony made it all right to run away from her family?"

"Perhaps."

"She'll forget him. She's just too big for her britches."

"You're right, mother. I'm going to take a shower."

The night peered in through uncurtained windows. Grace grunted as she sat back down. The strain of waiting, of staying available for a need that didn't come, had been a waste. Naomi sat across from her by the fireplace, feeling time stretch.

"Grace, can I ask you something?" The old woman looked up. "I see Coyote. A lot. Once one of them marked all the tires on my truck while I was in it."

Grace thought. "How long did you sit there before it came?"

"Only a minute. I'd just put the top back on the thermos."

"Was your motor hot?"

"Yes, sure. But did you ever see a coyote do something like that? Walk around a car and mark all the tires?"

"Not around a hot motor."

"What would that mean?"

More thought. "Maybe nothing."

"I just wondered if it meant anything." Naomi began to pick at her pants leg. "To a Navajo."

"Maybe could be a warning, or too much of that Italian coffee you drink." Grace made a funny face and Naomi made a smile.

"I didn't thank you for calling me this morning."

"I was worried about that girl." Grace stood up, rubbing at her kidneys. Rueful, she said, "I want to tell you something, Jeannie. I feel bad about the way I've been with you. You're a pretty good woman. You don't mess around with men, and you don't act like everybody owes you something, and you're a good mother."

"Thank you."

"Dustin didn't tell us everything, did he?"

"I think he struck someone when Wellesley threw her fit."

"I do, too. I think he hit your daughter."

Naomi studied her jeans. "He might have had to."

"Right. Once I saw her like that. That girl has a devil inside of her." The jeans fascinated them both. After a minute, Grace went on. "You and Dustin are none of my business. I don't know how you got together back in California, and I guess Dustin got his chest hurt because of you, but he never has right-out told me so.

"I don't know why you decided to bring those kids of yours over here from California, either. But nobody has to tell me about Wellesley. She grew up thinking she's so super-smart she can get away with just anything. Now, listen." Grace made deliberate eye contact, lecturing. "One time I had a dog, a bitch, who every time she had a litter, she'd nurse those pups until they had all their teeth and were eating her raw. She'd get to be skin and bones, nursing those no-good pups. Remember that. There's one thing even good parents can't do, and that's make their kids into something they aren't. Do you understand me? Because there's always a trickster at work, call it Coyote or whatever you want to.

"You go stiff when you see Coyote, and you're right; there's a trickster in your life. He gave you Wellesley and Clive. You can call it their genes or fate or some other Anglo stuff if you want to. But now you have to stop nursing them. If you don't, they'll eat you raw."

Grace was finished. She had never spoken for so long in Naomi's presencde. Naomi pressed the back of the standing woman's hand against her forehead.

"So what would you do with Wellesley, mother Grace?"

"That's not my job, so I don't know. But you're strict, and you know when to be easy. Punish her, if it's going to make you feel better. But don't try to hold on to that girl." Grace retrieved her hand to pat at Naomi's bowed head. "She fell for some belagana blondie who sweet-talked her and made her feel like a grown-up. Sex is like Coyote. But you have to talk to my son about that. I'm going to bed."

Fifty-one

Violet light fanned across the saltillo tiles from under Wellesley's door. Naomi knocked, paused, and knocked. Curtain rings hissed across their wrought-iron rods and the light on the floor turned yellow. Wellesley opened the door. She wore a velvet robe as black as her long hair.

"May I come in?"

"Sure."

The girl went to her bed and sat down. The bed and slipper chair were red against a wall of black velveteen drapes. Incense thickened the air and burned Naomi's throat. She was tired; she played the scene from the silly chair feeling like the heroine of a soap opera.

"Are you all right, darling?"

"Sure."

"Are you hungry?"

"No."

Naomi waited a beat. "Can I do anything to make this easier?"

"You can leave me alone; I'm busy."

"Not until we get back together."

Sly gave a barren laugh. "Whatever that means."

"It means talking; communicating. You know."

Sly favored her mother with a pitying stare. "No, I don't."

Naomi took a deep breath. "Okay, I'll go first. It looks to me like you're planning to hurt your future, so I'm worried. I love you."

"Are you hurt too?"

"Yes, sure. But I'm confused because you wanted to elope." Naomi paused. "About why you kept your feelings for Stan a secret."

"That should be obvious, mom. Even after the kinaaldá you guys don't want me to be a woman."

"Not a married woman. That comes after maturity."

Sly was insulted. "I was a woman a long time before the kinaaldá."

The television script had a logic of its own and it was time for a revelation. Naomi slogged through. "There's a woman emerging from you, but she isn't complete. A woman controls what she does, even if she can't control her feelings. She thinks before she hurts the people who love her."

"You don't know whether I thought about those things."

"If you did, and acted as you have, you were selfish. I hope that's not true."

Wellesley straightened. "No, I'm not selfish or childish, I just don't trust you. I knew you'd do just what you did." She looked away. "I just didn't think you'd catch us." She pulled her wand from her deep pocket, a silver-tipped ebony stick circled with wings and silver snakes. She began playing with it.

"Of course we'd catch you, Wellesley. You could have expected that."

"Because you 'love' me?"

"Because we love you."

Sly stopped fiddling with the wand. She set it onto the bed, picked it up and put it down again.

The script went over the top: "Then why did he attack me?"

"Who? Your father?"

"Yes, my father! Your precious Dustin!" Naomi flinched. "He hit me! He hit me more than once! He knocked me unconscious!"

It was Naomi's turn to look away. "I thought so."

"He hit me in cold blood! The officer said he had to pull him off me! My own father would have killed me, that's how much he 'loves' me! And now I have to stay with him up here away from everything! When he hates me! They don't care! He might try to kill me again!"

"Don't exaggerate."

"I'm not exaggerating! I'm afraid of him! You didn't see the look on his face!"

Naomi thought perhaps she had. "When did he do this? When he first arrived at the police station?"

Sly pretended to think. "A little while after that."

"Then he had a reason, Wellesley. What was it?"

"I don’t know!"

The girl's vehemence betrayed her lie; Naomi turned icy. "Is that the truth?" Sly was the first to drop her eyes. "Of course it isn't."

Sly began, high of voice and tender of face, "It happened again, mom! I was going along okay, excited, but you know. Then they caught us and frisked us and put us in the cop car. You know, you can't get out of that back seat? There are no handles on the doors back there! You feel like some kind of animal in a cage! And then at the police station they were so cold about everything! About asking who we were, and just writing things down without saying anything. So I started to get mad, and then I got scared, and those snakes tried to get in the jail, and I lost control! I mean, I just couldn't stop it! It came all over me again, like when I was a kid! They were taking Stan away! I just knew I wouldn't ever see him, or know where he was, or what they were asking him or doing to him..." She began to cry. "They were taking him away! I told myself it was just for a little while. I tried to make myself believe that. But I lost control."

"And your father..."

"He's never seen me like that! He didn't know I'm like that, mom! He still doesn't know about Clive, but that's different. He's never seen me like that at all!"

Naomi disbelieved most her performance, but despite Grace's parable about dogs and pups she loved her daughter; she moved to the bed and rocked the girl in her arms. Wellesley nuzzled and clung. They rocked for a long time, creaking the bedsprings and wrinkling the awful velveteen cover.

After a while Naomi took her daughter's round face between her hands. "Dustin has known, Wellesley. He knew before I did. And he's loved you and done all he can to help you learn control. He always will."

"Will he?" Sly's luminous eyes mooned at her mother like an innocent babe. "Always, mom? Like at the kinaaldá?"

The hairs on Naomi's arms stiffened. The voices in her head, constant for so many hours now, stopped as adrenaline, or Peakspore, took control and she could discern the truth. Still looking into her daughter's face, she lowered her hands to her lap. "You mean it, that you were a woman before the ceremony. And during the kinaaldá, you fainted because you're pregnant. With a third-generation Peakspore child."

Sly didn't answer; she didn't need to.

Fifty-two

Dustin's footsteps crossed the mezzanine. His closet door opened and closed; his footsteps recrossed. Naomi stared at the hearth and waited for him to settle. His chair creaked. The wall by the stairway to his quarters was lined with bloody-red bayeta rugs. Naomi climbed the stairs brushing them with her fingers. Dustin's shallow bedroom came into view, pools of yellow light on the beamed ceiling, then glaring into her eyes. He was enthroned on a steer-horn armchair next to his heavy four-poster; a floor lamp beside him shadowed his face.

He frowned and tossed his book onto a table. There was no other seat; she sat on his bed and hooked her boot heels over the rail. "Are you going to tell me what happened?" she demanded.

"I'd rather not."

"Did you hear what your mother said about Wellesley?"

"The last part. About sex being a trickster."

"She got that right."

"She usually does."

"I mean, literally. Wellesley is pregnant."

"What did you say?"

Naomi let it sink in, then said, "Pregnant. Her menses began last fall and she kept it a secret. Stan is the father. He’s Bayer’s child." She wasn't sure he had understood because he was so still. She went on: "Wellesley says you cold-cocked her."

"I did."

"You're always angry at whoever's available when you're hurt. This time you're angry at me."

"I suppose so."

She strode to the ornate table beyond the lamp, leaned over it and retrieved Dustin's tequila bottle from the shadows. She shoved it toward him. "Drink."

"No."

"Yes. The only time you're talkative is when you're tipsy, and you’re a disgusting drunk, but by God we're going to talk about our pregnant little girl."

He became more magisterial yet. "I will not drink liquor in order to confirm to you that I am angry!"

"And I will not leave your room until you talk with me about our daughter! I will not move until we talk about our daughter, who has a lot more trouble ahead of her than just punishment for running away with a shit-head. In fact, I also will not leave until I get some answers from you about E. James Beyer and his brother Cornelius Beyer-Mitchell, who lives in Winslow and to whom you refuse to sell your product!" She shoved the bottle toward him again. "So drink. Or start talking."

"God damn it, woman! Cornelius Mitchell can have nothing to do with Bayer! They are apples and oranges." He rose like a heavy old man and began to pace. Naomi settled again on the bed, clutching the neck of the bottle. "Stanley's uncle is ill. He and his nephew are as devoted as father and son." The thought impressed him; his voice softened. He repeated himself. "As devoted as father and son. And he's dying, Mitchell is; the patrolman told me. All that man has ever done is run sheep. He could hardly read well enough to sign Stanley out of jail. And everything he eats is‒is useless to him. He lives on liquid vitamins. He keeps going and works anyhow. He wants to assure his adopted son‒yes, his brother's son‒of a future. He told me that."

Naomi opened the bottle, wiped the lip and sipped, watching him over the gold label. She said, "So right now Wellesley is performing a ritual to heal him; she's been doing it for months. And despite your unwillingness to discuss it, she's pregnant by his nephew, who is another of Peakspore's spawn."

"She's practicing magic?"

Naomi slammed the bottle onto the floor and stood up. "God damn it! If there's one thing this latest mess has done, it's yank my head out of the sand! Our kids are Peakspore animals! Cornelius Beyer-Mitchell is Jim Bayer's brother! Jim bankrolls him! Everyone east of Flagstaff knows that!" Dustin whirled and stared. "All I had to do was ask the first person I met in Winslow, and he told me the whole awful thing! Maybe you didn't know that; I'll give you the benefit of a doubt."

Dustin was baffled. "I didn't."

"Well then, here's more news. Bayer is howling mad, but he's running loose." Naomi studied her magic wrists.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why is Jim Bayer 'howling mad'?"

Dustin had moved close. Like her, he seemed fascinated by her wrists.

More quietly she said, "Because he kidnapped me."

"And you attacked him," Dustin furnished. "But he was exposed to Peakspore, too. He could have defended himself."

"He tried. He tied me up, but that gave me the edge I needed because it made me as mad as he is." Dustin was very still. She sighed. "Does that tell you anything? I beat his face to a pulp. And then a rabid coyote bit him."

"Christ Jesus."

"So here we are. And is your pity for the illiterate Cornelius supposed to induce a miscarriage for Wellesley? Or do you plan to raise her children? Because God only knows what they'll be. Or do you think the whole thing will just go away? Do you think Peakspore will just go away?"

Dustin thundered. "What do you want from me, Jeannie? Answers? Do you know what he's after? Bayer? That pathetic Mitchell? Or even Jim's purported son, Stanley?"

"Yes, I do know. They want Peakspore. All three of them, for different reasons. And what I want from you is straight, unvarnished answers."

Dustin paused. His pacing resumed, slowed and stopped. He said, "If your information is correct, the boy and his father know who and where we are. Stanley came here for either Peakspore or Wellesley's ability to create it. How much danger shall I assume? And should I take you and the twins away?"

Naomi shook her head, more frustrated than before. "Think, Dustin! If Bayer hasn't called in the Feds, there's a reason! He has another customer than Cornelius!" Dustin paused. "Overseas! Yes! His being insane confuses the whole situation. But the immediate problem is Wellesley's pregnancy, and we have to talk about it first!"

Dustin resumed his pacing.

Naomi continued, more calmly, "Then, we have to guess whether Beyer's ever going to come after me with the law. We're not talking simple inconvenience here, Dustin. We're talking about preventing Peakspore from crossing borders, going to terrorists who hate Americans. We're talking about me avoiding a lifetime in prison, and blowing your cover, preventing charges against you as an accomplice. And we're considering the possibility of our half-crazy Peakspore kids living without parents, one of them an expectant mother."

Dustin halted. "I didn't think of it! So help me God, Naomi, I did not think of it! Or you! I just didn't make the connections! I was so involved in what Wellesley did today..."

Naomi relented. "You hit her, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"With your fists."

"Yes."

"Socked her a good one!"

He creaked onto his chair. "Yes."

"Knocked her unconscious and kept hitting her!"

"Yes. God."

Her voice softened. "As if she were a loathsome animal."

"She was all over that policeman! It wasn't that so much, it was the way she did it, so violent!. She was shouting those weird names and foaming at the mouth."

"I know."

"No you don't, Naomi."

"Her eyes were rolled back into her head, weren't they, Dustin? She was jerking all around, wasn't she? She was in a killing frenzy, wasn't she? She was just like those animals, wasn't she? She was an animal, wasn't she?"

Weakly, "Yes."

"And you hated her! You had to knock her silly in order to control her. And the police might have done worse things to her."

"I had to‒Naomi, my own child!" He paused, at last hearing Naomi's excuse. "Yes. I had to do it. But she just finished her kinaaldá, and she was so sweet then, and so tired." He paused again and the horror came back to his face. "But I had to force open her jaw and tear her teeth out of that man's crotch while she clawed right through his shirt into his belly with her fingers. His blood was all over her mouth and she didn't even...she wasn't aware of it. She didn't know what she was doing."

Dustin stared at something, but Naomi was thrown back into Bayer's lap in his car, possessed and butting his pulpy face. She caught the coppery smell of his blood and felt her own lust to maim. She saw her daughter full and clear, understood her continual animalness. And forgave it.

"I didn't know her," Dustin was saying, and Naomi turned her attention back to him. "She wasn't my daughter any more. I wanted to squash her like a bug. Then I hit her as hard as I could. I'd still be doing it, except some policemen intervened."

"Dustin..."

"And now you tell me she's pregnant, by another Peakspore child." He looked up and read Naomi's agonized face. "And you were like that with Bayer? No. Not you, Jeannie. I won't believe it!" He caught her, wrapped his long arms clear around her and pulled her onto his lap. "Not you too, Naomi! Not like Wellesley. You couldn't, Naomi, not unless... You're not like that. You defended yourself. It wasn't like that with you. Not you, Jeannie. Not you, Naomi."

She balled against his chest and felt his tears on his face. "Oh Dustin. Poor Dustin."

They rocked one another in his big uncomfortable chair, murmuring, stroking, crying. They moved to the bed. They clung and stroked and pressed into one another. All that night their bodies cradled each other and at last Naomi got to relive the feel of him, the delicious smell of him, the joy and all the whole world of pain.

Fifty-three

Naomi woke in the big bed alone; Dustin had risen for a day's work. Life was cold, the world was empty. She knew she was being silly, that he had only let her sleep; still, between her hunger for him and her grief at Wellesley's awful pregnancy, she was in no condition to cope.

She found Clive in the kitchen, reheating posole. When she entered, he nodded and waved toward the table, then continued throwing garlic into the pot.

Naomi sat. "Is that breakfast?" she asked.

"Unh."

"I'd like some."

"Okay."

"Is there coffee?"

He filled a mug from the stove. Naomi sipped and concentrated on finding cheerful thoughts. Clive gave her a warm tortilla from the oven and a bowl of the stew, then sat down. He began talking as he tore off a piece of tortilla.

"If Stan can deliver Sly's body to Dr. Bayer, he'll get a year in Europe. But Stan hasn't made up his mind about that. He thinks Sly's the greatest thing since sliced bread."

Cheerfulness died a quick death; Naomi grabbed her son's wrist so hard he dropped the tortilla into his bowl. "If you're going for dramatic effect," she ground out, "talk to Sly. If you want to communicate with your distraught mother, start from the beginning and speak in complete sentences."

Clive was unabashed. Looking straight into her eyes he said, "If Stan can deliver Sly's body."

"How do you tell me something at‒seven in the morning‒that you couldn't last night at ten?"

"Telephone." He picked the tortilla piece from the stew with his other hand and flicked it into his mouth, still meeting her stare. He chewed and swallowed. "I didn't know last night. I called in some favors."

Naomi released his wrist. "From whom?"

"A friend turned me on to Herk's phone number. Dick Staples. He said Sly cast some spell over Stan, and now he's dippy about her."

"The big guy? Built like a pro tackle?"

"Yes." Clive assessed Naomi's continuing outrage at him and went on. "His dad works for Stan's uncle; he and Stan sort of grew up together. Stan tells him a lot."

"And you know Dick Staples well enough to call in favors in the middle of the night."

"No. I didn’t until the ceremony. A friend called him for me last night to sort of lean on him. Then my friend called me back, and I called Dick. And Dick told me."

"I see."

"So Stan was going to marry Sly yesterday, then work some kind of deal with his dad. His dad isn't crazy enough to be restrained, he just has some kind of...episodes."

"Is that what Dick told you?"

"Yes. He saw the old man pitch one of his fits. I guess he goes angry and raves, then gets physical."

Naomi filled a spoon with stew. She set it into her bowl on an island of hominy and examined it, weighing options. "All right. Listen," she said. "He wants all our bodies."

Clive couldn't sustain the tension that Naomi imposed; he leaned back and became the ordinary, worried teenager he'd been in the truck. "But Stan doesn't go along with the program, mom!" he said.

"Not yet." She ate some stew; her stomach griped, and that gave her sour satisfaction.

"Mom, would Dr. Bayer have experimented with Stan? His own son?"

"I wouldn't put it past him. Tissue samples, every body function monitored, follow-up doses of Peakspore‒after all, he's a mad scientist, right?" She softened the bitterness of her tone. "Of course, Stanley was just a baby in Berkeley, and there wasn't much time before his father lost the compound.... What do you think of Stan? If you just met him, would he seem normal?"

"You mean, is he okay? No. He tries to flim-flam everyone, and he has a gang that follows him around and takes orders. Dick says he's a mean sucker. Gets off on scaring kids and hurting animals. Things like that."

"And he wants to con his dad?" she asked.

"Yes."

"For what? What's in it for him if he runs away with Wellesley and doesn't give her to his dad?"

Clive thought. "Sex, drugs and rock 'n roll.... And Peakspore, maybe."

"Right."

"Peakspore for his dad too, but why doesn't his dad make it himself?"

"What if he doesn't remember how?"

Clive's eyebrows tented and his mouth turned into an "O".

"Precisely," Naomi went on. "What if? What if the last source is in our bodies? Say, in our mitochondria, our glands, our blood? And what if Sly is the only one he's found whom he could..." Naomi stopped before she told Clive about Bayer's kidnap attempt.

"There's me," Clive said, and fiddled with his spoon. The seconds stretched. "What should we do, mom?"

"I have to talk with Dustin."

Wellesley came in, rangy and sleepy and everyday in jeans and a work shirt. "About what? Where's Grandma? What's for breakfast?" She stooped and kissed Naomi's cheek, then stretched elaborately. She chucked Clive under the chin. It was as if nothing had happened.

Clive rose and dealt more posole. "Eye of newt, tail of bat; your favorite stew."

Wellesley sat beside Naomi on the bench and sprawled her arms and head onto the plank table. "Don't talk witchcraft this morning, unbelieving dawg. I been up all night, and I'm so good I'm dangerous." She opened her eyes. "What's up, mom?"

Naomi had watched the performance with disbelief, then disgust that flattened all expression out of her voice. "You were up all night at the stones."

"I didn't have anything better to do, mom. Obviously I was too hyped to sleep. How long you going to stay up here?"

Naomi and Clive exchanged looks. "Who’d you hoodoo?" Clive asked. "Got a favorite victim?"

Wellesley assumed a seeress's melodramatic pose. "That is for The Spirits to know," she pronounced. "The Spirits will Reveal All at the Solar Apogee."

Naomi stood and reached for her jacket. "I'm going to talk to Dustin and Grace."

"You mad, mom?" Wellesley asked. Her voice was not at all solicitous.

"Tell her, Clive."

She pulled the door shut after her. Clive's voice was persuasive even through the door. "Stan's dad is the Dr. Bayer, Sly; the guy who made Peakspore with dad. Now he knows where we are." Naomi didn't hear her daughter's reaction.

Fifty-four

The rising sun had shortened and lightened all the morning shadows into blue streaks and pools against gold-colored rock. Dustin wasn't in the lab. Movement in the brush by the creek jostled their greening branches. Dustin appeared and disappeared, stooped, dodged and spun, laughing, his loose hair trailing like black flame. Naomi was enchanted.

He saw her and raised a pair of coyote pups, their legs dangling. "Playing with these," he called.

Naomi hesitated, invoked logic's spell against her fear of the Trickster, and headed downslope. "Cute! How old are they?"

"About two months. Found 'em. Mother must have been killed."

"Were they weaned?"

"Yes."

"Are they healthy?"

"Around me? Sure!"

They met, kissed. Naomi took a pup because Dustin offered it. It whined and squirmed. Its pelt was already roughening with guard hairs.

"You're hurting it, Naomi. Don't hold it so tight."

"Sorry." She nestled it into the bend of her arm and lifted its short muzzle to see the face; it twisted and gnawed her finger. Her edginess left and delight flooded her. She and Dustin held the pups and watched the glen light up around them. They couldn't see the house. Birds quieted. The pups fell asleep.

"Where is mother Grace?" Naomi asked.

"In the hogan, cleaning it up." Naomi nodded. His warmth was like a hug. "This is good," he said.

"Like a private world. I wish I could stay."

His warmth moved away; the pup stirred. "Are you going somewhere?"

"Well, of course! The Bayer thing isn't settled."

Dustin was definite. "Not of course; there's nothing to settle. Mother is getting ready for our wedding."

"What?"

"Our wedding. We can use the hogan. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

He was flat serious, oblivious to the threat to her from Bayer and the FBI. His softened eyes and tender mouth expressed nothing more complicated than confidence in her love.

"God, Dustin, I want it."

He turned to stone. After a while he said, "That's an original form of refusal."

"Dustin, we can't get married! Things are too upset."

He was furious, but he didn't move because he was too besotted by her to feel his own anger. He addressed the glen in a voice wired with tension.

"Things? Upset? Here. Give me that pup before you squeeze it to death."

She handed it over. Dustin, testy and clumsy, dropped it on top of its litter mate. He sent her an accusing look.

"You're crazy, Naomi, you know that?" he said. "Because you need me, and now I know you love me. Our kids are trying to self-destruct, you live under an alias, there's a deranged man after you. The FBI wants to throw you into jail for life. We may never age. We may never die." He faced her. "Naomi, I have money; a good home; and influence, as long as I'm on this reservation. I can protect you. I've done it for Clive and Wellesley. And sure, I love you. You knew that."

"No, I didn't!"

"Damn! Don't be coy! You know you're the only reason I'm single. And this is the second time you said you 'can't' marry me! You're just crazy!"

"No, I'm not! Stop saying that! And give me back that puppy before you drop him, waving him around like that!" She stuffed the sleepy pup into her jacket pocket. "You sound just silly, Dustin! How was I supposed to know you love me? You never say it, or‒you never even touched me at all until you held my hand that day at the sing! You never tell me what's bothering you, unless it's me, and then not unless you're mad. I have to find out in The Navajo Times that you're this rich guy who controls the southwestern market in sheep. I didn't even know you're big in the tribe until Chairman MacDonald and his gang showed up for your dinner. You don't tell me diddly! Then I'm supposed to guess that you love me? It's a real good thing I got so mad last night is all I can say, or I wouldn't even know you remember how to screw!"

"Now you sound like my mother! Sometimes I think you act like you're a Navajo just to be like her!"

"Don't give me that! You do it, too! When you're in town, you sound just like Dan Rather!"

What had begun with confused passion and high purpose had descended to low comedy. It would lead to embraces, kisses, love-making. Naomi pulled back.

"No, Dustin, I won't marry you. Because we'd be happy. For a little while we'd goof around and moon into each other's eyes, like a minute ago. We'd forget everything else and hold hands and raise coyote pups and at night we'd snuggle in front of the fire. Then Wellesley would slip off and marry that blond fool, and make Peakspore. And Clive, as soon as you cut him some slack, would start in on the horses, and you'd have a practising sadist for a son! Or he'd just leave, and do who knows what. Become one of those surgeons they write horror novels about. And it would kill your mother, just watching it happen. And what about those kids Wellesley is carrying? You should see her this morning, acting casual and innocent. She was up all night again, hexing people. So I won't marry you and let things go to hell just to be happy for a little while. I'm going to Winslow and get Beyer and his cocky son, even if I have to hurt them."

She headed for the house, intent on getting into her truck. In an instant they were back into their squabble but unequipped to battle.

Dustin bellowed, "See? You're crazy, Naomi! I didn't think of that! Let me do it!"

"No! I'm too mad, and you're too nice!"

"You'll be hurt!"

"Maybe not! I can do things as Jeannie Walsh. I'm going to do them, too. Then maybe we'll get some peace and quiet around here!"

"That's crazy too!"

Grace appeared beside the hogan and watched them from across the big compound. Naomi stopped shouting but kept accusing Dustin over her shoulder and striding uphill to the kitchen door. "I'll tell you what's crazy! Thinking you're safe from power junkies, just because you're to hell and gone away from civilization, is crazy! Thinking just because I love you more than anything that ever moved, we can be happy together! That's crazy!"

The pup in her jacket poked its muzzle out and looked around. There was a cardboard box lined with a plaid shirt by the kitchen door. Naomi saw everything at once; the red mud, the enameled sky, and Dustin's baffled, closed face. "I don't know what I'll do, Dustin. But I can't let myself in on any more delusion. Not even to have you."

She knelt to place the pup into the box and rearranged the shirt for the other one. The pups stumbled and pissed themselves and sniffed one another. "It reminds me of something Gilbert Murray wrote in a book about the Greek epics: '... here we stand with our infinite desires, beacons of brief fire... What are we to make of the wonder while it is still ours?'"

Dustin caught her as she rose. She stiffened and screwed her eyes shut, not to change her mind. "Wonder," he murmured, and cradled her cheek in his hand. "Be with me on this thing, Naomi. Be with me while we love each other, before we learn to hate each other. Stay with me. Let me take care of you."

"I can't!" She freed herself with a wrench that broke her heart. "I won't pretend any more that life is safe, or all children are lovable. Sometimes I'm afraid of my own kids. I'm afraid that anything else we try to bring into the world, even our own happiness, will be harmful. So I won't help you pretend."

He dropped his hand. "Then that's it, then."

"I guess so."

Fifty-five

She grabbed her purse on the way through the house, slapped open the big double doors of the entry and was into the cab of her truck. But then Dustin had her, was rough, and was shoving her toward the house. "Get inside!"

"No!"

"God damn it! Get into the house!"

Grace, breathless and goggling, stood in the doorway. The twins were beside her, big-eyed. Naomi looked beyond Dustin's shoulder. And stared.

Because that's when Clive got his rodeo, although not in any ordered, civilized way. An army of boys with rifles and shotguns swarmed over the rise from the Peakspore animals' pens. Their uncertain eyes swiveled right and left. Their weapons were aimed at the sky, at their feet, at one another. Each boy wore a bit of camouflage. One spoke into a field radio. Stan Mitchell swaggered in front, smirking a challenge.

Dodging Dustin, Naomi ran back to her truck. He grabbed her again. "Get inside with the children!"

"I'm going to chase them off! Where did they come from?"

"Damn it, woman! Get mother and the children out of harm's way! Call the police!"

Clive was already shooing Grace from the door and shoving at his sister. One of the rifles lifted and aimed. "Mom!" he yelled.

Naomi dashed back. She stopped within the shelter of the door jamb and turned. Dustin was still at the truck.

"The Arm, mom!" Clive was yelling with excitement. "They're coming from the dock! They must have a boat."

Stan stopped well off from the house and assumed the heroic pose of a movie gunfighter, his hands ready to grab iron.

Fury flattened Dustin's voice. "Stan, You have two minutes to collect your friends and begin to leave here."

"I came for Peakspore, Mr. Begay." Stan widened his stance for a more heroic profile, then ruined it with a silly laugh.

"Stupid!" Clive yelled, "You stupid prick!" and started toward his father.

Naomi yanked him back. "Keep your lusting sister inside, Clive! Grace, are you calling the police?"

Grace was offended. "Yes I am, missy! But first I called the bunkhouse. Those police won't get here until it's too late."

Wellesley, exalted and quivering, stood aslant the window beside the door. Naomi said, "Clive, don't let her out of the house! She's as destructive and stupid as that white trash out there!" Dustin was weaponless and exposed. Naomi fished into her bag. "Dustin!" she yelled, "Your men are coming out! Catch!"

He caught the keys with an off-hand move and tossed them onto the seat of the truck. His eyes were as small-bore and red-lit as a berserker's. "One minute," he called to Stan.

Stan played cool. "I'm not leaving, Mr. Begay. If you won't let me have what's rightfully mine, I'll take Sly."

Clive called, "You want to swap your semen for a ram's?""

Naomi: "For the love of Christ, Clive, shut up!"

"Dumb son of a bitch!"

"Clive, come into the house!" Naomi shoved him, but was too distracted to make it stick. "Get into the house!" She broke his grip from the door jamb, lifted his big body and heaved. He skidded on his butt across the red tiles and rose crazy as a maddened bull. Naomi braced for a fight.

But Grace's scornful, rational voice cut through the mayhem that her grandson intended. "Clive, if you want to be a great big man, don't pick on your own mother! Get your father's rifle, and go help him." Clive glared at Naomi, but moved toward the stairs. "There's a pistol up there in the desk, too. Get it to him. And don't let those boys know it."

"How?" Wellesley demanded from her window.

"Out the back, I guess. He's so smart, he can figure out a way."

"I'll help."

"No you won't, missy! We can't trust you with those belagaana."

They had lost track of the scene outdoors. Naomi's truck started; its transmission howled; its studded tires slewed and grabbed mud. The three women spun to watch. Dustin, hunched over the steering wheel, charged the loose knot of boys. The first shots were fired.

Clive clattered down the stairway with Dustin's weapons. "Who's shooting?"

"Dustin's charged the kids with the truck!" Wellesley said.

"It's our men shooting," Grace claimed.

Naomi was into the yard running and dodging the first of Wellesley's‒or Clive's‒or Stan's‒snakes as they left the shelter of the scrub. The truck roared. Warriors and weapons scattered. Dustin braked, spun left, and charged again. More scatter. More weaponry skidding into the mud. The nascent army was a bunch of isolated, pants-wetting boys. Dustin's men roared out from behind the laboratory with rifles and pistols banging into the air like doomsday. The folk singer fell to his knees and vomited near the gate of a corral. A boy with soiled fatigues stood slack-jawed in Dustin's path. Others ran, then stopped by buildings or stock pens; any barrier.

Dustin climbed out of the seat and paused. Naomi skidded to a halt. The man had become so dangerous that she was afraid to move. "It's over. It was as simple as that," she thought.

But she was wrong. Dustin charged Stan. He took minutes, maybe hours, to reach him. He gripped the boy and began to lift in slow motion.

"Dustin, dooon't!"

Stan rose to the limit of Dustin's reach, then took slow flight. Dustin's fists joined at shoulder height. As the boy fell, the joined fists struck his midriff with all the force behind a full-grown, ferocious animal-man's heavy shoulders. Stan doubled and half-fell, half-flew, backward. He skidded and slid toward the corral. He was limp, gone.

"Jesus!" someone prayed.

Dustin turned to the next boy, one of those who had wet his pants. The boy was backing and filling, his mouth working. One of the hired men handed off his rifle and headed to intercept Dustin's rage.

"Dustin!"

Naomi flew to the hypnotized boy, knocked him flat and lay on him, pinning his arms to his sides, praying the boy was invisible. "Stop, Dustin!"

"Easy, boss!"

There was a scuffle very near her head. Two men grunted, then three, then more. The scuffling slowed and she turned to peek. A man's arms were wrapped around Dustin's from the front, another's from the back. Balancing, they danced and stumbled. Another man grabbed and steadied them all.

Dustin quit struggling. The boy Naomi was covering craned his neck and stared bug-eyed, over her shoulder. Dustin shook his head like a baffled animal.

Naomi didn't trust him. "No more, Dustin?"

"Enough," he said, and was released a little at a time. He glanced around. "A couple of you men get everybody's weapons. The rest of you, I guess we'll have to put these boys somewhere until the police arrive."

Naomi rose and helped the boy to his feet. "Cowboy, you almost had yourself your last roundup."

"Yes, ma'am."

Sirens wallowed from the long drive and two patrol cars came into sight down by the house. Men piled from them and scattered with drawn weapons.

"It's all right, officers," Dustin called, and raised his arms. "The boys have had enough."

"That right?" one policeman called, "The war over?" He moved uphill, eyes looking wild and pistol waving. Clive, full of himself, ran to join his father.

Naomi herself renewed the war. She caught movement among the stock pens: it was Wellesley, sneaking. Stan was sagging against a gate and trying to regain his breath, but his seemingly limp, useless arm was busy unfastening the gate to the first pen.

"Get them!" Naomi screamed, "They're releasing the animals!"

The lead policeman aimed his gun. Stan saw it and fell through the opening gate into a crowd of milling, outsized sheep. Wellesley and one of Stan's boy-army leaped from gate to gate, opening them, charging into the animals and whooping. The first pistol shot stampeded the animals; the answering volley stampeded everyone. Sheep, horses, a Brahma bull scattered into the crowd.

"Mom!"

Naomi dove and clutched mother earth. Someone bellowed. Hooves thudded, guns barked or rattled. People screamed and fell. Blood stank. The ground under Naomi's face trembled. Looking up, she saw the brahma make straight for her, a coyote at his heels.

"MOM!" Clive's body arced feet-first from the top of a fence and landed with an audible whack astride the bull. "ROLL!" he yelled, and the animal's momentary shock gave Naomi just enough time. She was under the rail, then astride the fence watching her son on the brahma, his arms around its heaving neck and his cheek pasted devoutly to its poll. The bull spun, kicking, and Clive's legs flew free. He rose and resettled. The fence under Naomi splintered as the kick went home; she was on her back in the mire of the pen. Shots boomed. Someone screamed. Someone else called Clive. She scrambled up, her head roaring, shoving between the last of the shoulder-high sheep to get to the gate.

Stan became a hero. Mounted bareback and guiding a horse with his knees, he flashed toward the pitching bull and whipped Clive behind him and onto his own mount. The horse‒could Stan be guiding it with his mind?‒headed toward the dock. The brahma charged a tangle of standing and falling men. A second coyote joined the first, nipping at its ear, its tail. A scatter of snakes fringed the area, some advancing, others striking. More shots. The bull dropped.

Then Naomi was seized by a great level-headedness. The maniac animals were loose. The police and Dustin's men were missing the boys and shooting each other. Sly, Clive and Stan were headed toward the dock and drawing Dustin, with two policemen, after them. She, Naomi, was one of the nation's ten most wanted criminals.

She backed into the pen and climbed into the next one, noting that Old Thunder was gone. She made her way, urging the rest of the horses, a cow, more sheep, out of their enclosures to freedom. She cleared the compound.

She headed uphill. She ran through force-lines like dotted light or the golden tracers of bullets. Her hair escaped its pins and whipped the old stench across her face. Ahead of her, one of the orphan coyotes cantered and capered, playing with her as it had with Dustin. She got through Sly’s stone circle to the cottonwood and gripped the triple boles as the coyote yapped and wove in and out among the big stones. The Arm heaved up battered echoes of engines at the howl. A powerful launch moved out, then Dustin's smaller one.

Her world lay in miniature at her feet. She recognized Clive and Sly kneeling aft in the big launch. Stan and two other boys; Dick, and it looked like the singer, struggled with Thunder near the bow. At the wheel a round-headed man with a Hopi haircut steered toward a slot between a tower of red stone and a raw rock-slide. Dustin pursued in his launch, his long hair flying as he protested to the policeman behind him. The policeman knelt with his weapon at the ready, ignoring Dustin. The lead boat swerved; the Hopi helmsman jerked. She heard thin yells of anger, of alarm. Figures at the stern, near the huge twin engines, ducked and wrestled with a tangle of ropes that half-secured a red-decorated white barrel. They collided and gripped one another: Clive and Sly.

"No!"

More shots. The boat swerved from the rockslide. The twins slewed and struggled to right themselves.

"NO!"

And it was the taffy-haired, sweet-faced boy with the body of a giant who tumbled over the stern and onto the propellers.

Dustin's engine stopped; his boat began to drift. Something pale and ill-shaped bobbed to the surface of the water. The big launch disappeared around the rockslide as something else appeared on the water, also pale, surrounded by spreading blood.

"CLIVE!"

Dustin turned from the scene, mute and dazed. His poisonous, instant grief was automatic, a signal of the months it would take to flower and maim. Naomi shrank against the tree and prayed he would not see her. But he scanned his boat, then the rising cliffs, then the rim of the inlet for someone to blame. He found her.

Then, glaring, his fists gathered at his gut, he unleashed a long, echoing bellow of accusation and pain for his lost, his criminal children.

PART THREE

Fifty-six

Toward sunset of a late winter day Naomi carried Madeira and lady-fingers down a rock-strewn wash near her hogan. The soil along the top of the wash was red, growing dark piñon and juniper. The desert at its base was ochre. The large unclouded sky was green in the east and purple overhead.

Naomi's blue truck was parked near the ledge, canted forward because the land tilted. As she made her way she searched the ground for tire tracks; sometimes Sly drove right down the wash in Stan's Jeep. There didn't seem to be any new tracks, but Naomi wasn't sure because of the rocks.

Her face was still young. She was a mother-in-law and the grandmother of one-year-old twins. The twins ran well and fed themselves. Using ball-point pens and unlined paper, they copied letters from story books. They were silent. They lived in a grille-partitioned room with wall padding that rose to the height of their heads. Sly and Stan had an off-and-on marriage, currently off, and Sly lived in a rented house in East Flagstaff with the children. Naomi hadn't spoken to Dustin since Clive's memorial service.

The wash was long. The sun disappeared while Naomi walked, and a vein of cold followed her downhill. It would freeze that night, maybe snow. Lights ahead pricked the mauve dusk and showed the positions of Leupp Station, then farther off the Air Force test range, then Winslow. Straight east, three buttes joined and, with their talus slopes like skirts, resembled a woman standing with her back to the evening.

At the bottom of the wash Naomi turned left and walked toward her hogan. A coyote hesitated by the far cottonwood, then sat down to watch her. Across another wash was a line of gray-and-purple streaked cliffs, eroded so smooth that they resembled shoulders set edge-on. She reached the hogan. The windows were dark. "Sly?"

The dirt roof was stubbled with last year's lupine, which rustled. Sly wasn't there. Naomi stopped smiling. She entered the hogan and put the wine on the counter by the dry sink. She lit the camp stove, pumped water into a flowered kettle, and placed it on the flame. She ground coffee in a hand mill. When that was done and Sly still hadn't come, she pulled down a quilt from the rafters, pulled off her boots, and curled onto the cushioned bench that served as a bed. She fell into heavy sleep. The stove warmed the room until it ran out of fuel. The coffee water evaporated. The sky began to snow.

Naomi dreamed hard: Sly flew around her pickup and cawed like a crow. Ira Goetz, the man at Dustin's feast who had caught her eye, watched Sly and told her it was all right. Naomi entered the wood stove and flew up its chimney like smoke, joining the two Clives sitting in the stubble on the roof. Even in her sleep she knew her hogan was not a home. She woke slowly, wanting the coffee she hadn't made. Moonlight bounced from the snow and into the room through the windows. She sat up and dangled her legs from the shelf. The quilt clung to her back.

"God damn it."

She lit a fire in the stove by moonlight, squirting kerosene on a pile of crumpled papers and kindling. Then she hooked a cast-iron plate over the soft explosion, squinting. She listened.

"Sly?"

When the coffee was ready she drank it from a porcelain cup painted with roses. She wrote a note: "Sly. I was here, you weren't. Damn."

She anchored the note to the counter with her coffee cup, then put on her boots, drew the quilt over her head and shoulders, and left. The smoke from her fire rose straight and thin, flattening at the level of the bluffs and leaving a sickly odor like rotted flowers.

At the top of the wash Naomi spun around at the smell. A man across the farther wash recognized the smell, like she did. He noted the turn of her head silhouetted by the snow: the animal quickness of her movement. He took the blanket from his own shoulders as he stood up and began to move toward the hogan.

Naomi began to run heavily, then easily, with long strides. The blanket on her shoulders caught on a juniper and stayed. She ran without it until the eastern sky grew pale and the long desert by the standing woman became gray. She turned in a slow half-circle to the edge of the plateau and ran toward her truck. She was crying for her chemist daughter again when she started, but as she ran the tears dried and left tracks across her face. She did not see the frustrated man. She kept her eyes on the buttes that look like a woman at the edge of her world.

Fifty-seven

Sly called Naomi at her office. "No. Honestly, Mom, there's no way to overstate the man! He's simply the most charming, most intelligent, generous, most sexy‒hold it a minute; I just spilled some wine. Can you hang on?"

"Yes."

Naomi's business still occupied the street-corner suite of the hotel. The glass walls were lettered in gold and read, backward from where she sat,

JEANNIE'S

Reports - Dissertations - Theses

Business and Personal Disk Storage & Printing

Copies - Fax - Notary Public

Paralegal by Appointment

Silk ficus trees stood between the windows. They harbored little spiders that glistened in the early sun like spider mites and lent a certain credibility. Naomi sipped a latte and gauged the traffic. Cars, pickups, tourists and Indians. Slush in the gutters from last night's snow. Sunshine so brilliant it made her squint. It was a mid-morning Monday. Wanda and Ione still sat by the door. While she held the phone for Sly, a large-muscled boy handed her a typewritten couple of sheets with penciled corrections.

"Ready by one, Norm," she told him. Norm saluted with his forefinger and left.

"I'm back," she heard from the phone. "Rosie's mopping up for me."

"New housekeeper?"

"Yes. Where was I?"

"Generous, I think, or sexy. My son-in-law is the most generous something. He came back to you and his children. He gave you something."

"Yes. No, just himself. You get the idea. We're back together. So last night I couldn't tear myself away. I'm sorry."

Naomi said, without particular emphasis, "Bullshit, Sly. You could have called me. It's close to fifty miles to that filthy hogan, which you promised to clean. You said it was important that we meet there. I haven't seen you in weeks, and I miss you. Hang on."

She set down the phone. A girl wearing cashmere, Avon jewelry and a patronizing air tendered a grubby handwritten two sheets. She had drawn careful circles over each "i".

Naomi smoothed the paper and noted the class name. "Anderson wants three pages on these," she told the girl.

"Can you stretch it?" the girl asked, and smiled for the first time.

"It'll be just under two pages even if we do. You'd better sit over there and think of something else to say about Longfellow." She indicated a desk by a ficus. The girl glided over with her paper and sat, puckering her brow in annoyed thought.

Naomi picked up the phone. "I'm back."

"I thought it was urgent, Mom. Then Stan came, and I've missed him so much I just forgot to call you off."

"Huh."

"But at least now we don't have to worry about it."

"It? Worry about what? By the way, we're out of propane up there. Worry about what?"

"Nothing now, Mom. I got the jitters because I'm being followed again. Stan's back, though. Everything's great."

"Is he moving in, or did you just sleep together?"

The girl with the jewelry looked up sharply, then resumed chewing the end of her ball-point pen. A boy with his polo shirt buttoned too high and his hair cut too short entered and looked from the girl to Wanda and Ione, not seeing the big "Papers Here" sign on Naomi's desk. Naomi waved and pointed.

Wellesley was silent. Then, "Jesus, Mom. Thanks for the support."

"Sorry, babe." Another silence. The boy remained by the door, looking uncertain. "I said I'm sorry, Sly."

"All right."

"Look, babe. I hate your awful marriage. I hate the way you hurt yourself over Stan. Next time you want to see me, come on home."

Wanda waved the boy to her own station and took his paper. The other phone line rang and she picked it up.

"Right, mom."

"Of course, if you and Stan work things out this time, that’s great. And I'm not just thinking of the kids."

"Right, Mom." The line went dead.

"Sly?"

Naomi looked at her aggrieved reflection in the computer screen. She had been too blunt. Again. She picked up a pencil and set it down. Ira Goetz limped by the office wearing slacks, tie and his Hopi pageboy haircut.

Her eyes followed him out of sight. Going to his office, probably. An accountant; that's all she knew. And oh yes, a fellow volunteer at the Indian Hospital. Drove an ambulance sometimes. She liked him. Or something. Sometimes when they talked she got distracted.

Two women in halter tops and shorts followed him, tourists with tans and gooseflesh. A car stalled and got a couple of horns.

Wanda brought the blond boy's paper and set it in the basket on Naomi's desk. She stood with her arms akimbo and watched Naomi fiddle with her keyboard. "What's her story?" she asked.

"I don't know. Says she's being followed." She meant Sly was paranoid and flakey again, but knew it would sound harsh if she said that.

Wanda assumed it. "She let Stan come back? Maybe it'll scare away the bad dreams."

"Probably."

"That was the Air Force on the phone. They're faxing the okay on that press release."

"Will you deliver it to The Sun?"

"Sure. There's a test coming, so they want to announce it before we feel it."

"Okay."

"I told 'em not to spray that VX until the wind blows south toward those stinking sheep."

"That makes me feel safer."

"They seek public input."

Ira returned, nodded through the window at her smile, and entered. He carried a slick-looking briefcase with brass corners. Wanda looked him over as she ambled back to her chair. He took the visitor's seat at Naomi's desk.

"Business," he announced in his soft voice, and pulled a stationery box from his briefcase, then a manuscript from the box. The manuscript was thick and typewritten.

"Nice to see you," she said.

"And you."

His eyes showed he was middle-aged, but his face was unseamed. He had an air of familiarity that always confused her.

"Is this a novel?" she asked. There was a self-conscious pause. He nodded and stopped looking into her face. She flipped through the sheets. "Yours?" He nodded again and put his hands on his knees. He could sit still and project animation. It made him seem very near. "This is ready for submittal," Naomi said. "Do you want me to copy it?"

"I want you to read it. The English is good, so you don't have to check that."

"Read it?"

"Yes." He kept looking at his manuscript.

"Ira, I'll be happy to, but we don't..."

Wanda caught her eye and winked, amused at the thought of a Hopi novelist. Ione's eyes never left her keyboard.

He said, "I want you to read my book. I took it to the creative writing professor, but he hasn't the time. The librarian wouldn't. She says you're a good critic."

"She's wrong."

He glanced at her, then back at the desk. His face was round and his large nose arched at the bridge. He had a square chin. "I'll pay you," he said after waiting to think.

"I charge fifteen dollars an hour, whatever I do."

He smiled at the accidental innuendo and Naomi blushed. "That's all right, Jeannie, but I worked hard on this book. I want to be sure it's readable before I market it."

She did not feel like reading a first novel. "I'll take it home," she said anyhow. Maybe it was curiosity. Or his unflappable poise.

"Home? That won't get it dirty, will it?"

"You're teasing me."

"That's a lot of trouble, after you worked all day. I should help."

Chuckling, she said, "Help me read it? No." She put the manuscript back into its box.

He said, "I thought you could read it here." He paused, looking at her hands on the box. "Can I come by your place later and see how you're doing? Answer any questions? What's your address?"

"I'll write down any questions, Ira. Can you come back in two days? Here?"

"Sure." He nodded, pushed himself up, and went to the door. "Call me if you want to," he said. "Or come over. Any time. My address is on the box."

Wanda watched him go, then glanced at Naomi.

"Hunh," Naomi said.

"What's that joker's name?" Wanda asked. "I've seen him somewhere."

"Ira Goetz. Maybe on a cowboy calendar, but he's a CPA with an accounting business over by the post office."

"Really."

Ione glanced at the other women and smiled at her computer. "I think he looks nice."

Fifty-eight

The days were short, and dusk came well before closing time. By five o'clock the interior lights made the glass walls black, and pedestrians floated into and out of sight between reflections of office furniture. Naomi totaled receipts and straightened papers. When she was finished, she switched on the night light, set the security alarm and locked up, heading toward the parking lot in the alley. It was cold. The window of the fitness center across the street sported a sweating patron on an exercycle. A postal van headed toward the corner.

Her truck wouldn't start. Squinting to see the engine by flashlight, and aware of a storm cloud lowering from the San Francisco Peaks, she tried the usual tests. She sensed Ira before she saw him.

"Trouble?" he asked.

"It won't start."

"I could tell. Let me try."

She watched him work and, skittish, avoided contacting his body, she was so conscious of him. Twice she propped the flashlight between the raised hood and the chassis in order to get into the cab and try the ignition. His limp was pronounced when he moved around the car, but he had absolute certainty under the hood. She waited in the cab to warm up, and listened to the clink of his tools against the engine block. Then she got out again to watch. "You're getting your jacket dirty," she said, felt shy, then frowned.

He replaced the air filter and moved to her side of the engine. He waited for her to get out of his way. He didn't look at her. "I'll have to take you home," he said.

"That's okay. I'll get a ride later, after I call the garage."

"You want to wait? Sure? It's already cold out here."

"Yes. Thank you for trying, though. It was nice of you."

"Thursday, then."

"Yes. Thursday."

She called Sly and the garage, then waited by the hotel out of the quickening wind. The parking lot emptied enough for her to see the post office. Indians stood by its ramp under the street light, waiting for the Tuesday bus to Tuba City. The next one wouldn't leave until Friday. He must have been talking with them when he saw her problem, but now he was gone. The tow truck took her pickup and she went into the coffee shop to wait for Sly.

Ira was at the counter. He lifted his eyebrows at her through the mirror behind it. "Isn't your ride here yet?" he asked, watching her take a booth. "You can change your mind about my offer."

"No, thanks," she said, then added, "It won't be long."

They were the only customers and there was no waitress visible. He went to the coffee machine behind the counter, brought her a filled cup, then got his own and joined her. "It wouldn't be any trouble," he said. "Where do you live?"

"It's all right. My ride will be here."

"A neighbor? You might be interrupting someone's supper."

"I don't have neighbors," she smiled.

He had been teasing. When he smiled back his eyes became small and happy. "Where are you from, Jeannie?" he asked. "You walk like a squaw."

With a chill that killed her growing warmth for him Naomi realized that he was acting Anglo, leaning forward intimately, his arms crossed on the table.

"Fresno."

"I'm out of Polacca," he offered, "by West Los Angeles. That means my father was Jewish." He shifted his shoulders, a simple move that gave him Anglo arrogance. "But I didn't really think you're an Indian. Why do you walk like one?"

"I spent time on the rez. It was at an impressionable age."

"I didn't mean to pry, Jeannie."

Warming again, "Summers from six to about ten. Grandma was a missionary."

"Interesting."

"You're trying to pick me up."

He grinned and his eyes squinched up. After hesitation, Naomi smiled back. They talked a little, and more easily, but she began to smell Coyote. She lied to him about a former marriage and said her son died. He told her his wife took their three children, and now he only saw "the one daughter," who lived in Winslow. He had a place east of the Peaks, ran a few sheep as a hobby. He liked teaching relocated Navajos about bank accounts.

Solid citizen.

A lock of Naomi's hair wouldn't stay put.

She saw Sly drive up through the window to the street. She excused herself, left money at the unattended cash register, and left.

She wanted to know him, to stay with him and talk. She wanted to run and hide. She didn't want him to see her with Sly. She wanted him to wake up with a killer hangover at the Sunshine Mission for the Homeless.

Fifty-nine

The minute she got into Sly's truck she knew the girl was barely in control. Silent, tight-lipped, Wellesley shifted and popped the clutch so the truck lurched from signal to signal through the empty business section. At a sharp turn she down-shifted with a jerk and the transmission let out a howl.

"Shit," she complained, then asked, "What's wrong with your truck?"

"I couldn't tell."

"Hope it's not expensive."

They drove past the library, some houses converted for business, and uphill past a shopping center that sat on a rise and lit the scudding cloud bellies with neon.

"Stan and I aren't really back together."

Naomi looked for the tears that were in Sly's voice. It was too dark to see them. "I'm sorry, babe. What happened?"

"He came and went. I don't know why I lied to you this morning."

"Did you fight?"

"Sort of."

They were passing the parking lot beside Sly's old grammar school. She swerved without warning into the lot and braked, her shoulders heaving, her crying stifled and hurtful. Naomi turned off the ignition and tried to hug her daughter, but Sly swerved away, then back. She shoved her head against her mother's chest.

"God, mom," she snuffled, "It was awful. He came over and played with the kids, and was smiling, and I fed him, and for a while it was...we made love." She straightened. The light from a tall standard spilled over the dash but missed her face. "Got a Kleenex? He has another woman."

"Oh, babe..." Naomi sighed. She held her daughter again, lowered her cheek to the mass of black hair. Visions ugly as a two-bit lay danced against the windshield.

Sly squeezed back, then sat up. She took the Kleenex. "Then I started having one of those fits I used to have." She blew her nose.

Naomi got wary and straightened. "Violent?"

"God, it was awful! I don't know how I didn't kill him dead. I bit and screamed and threw things and he went away swinging a big snake. He hit me, I guess. I don't remember. I thought I was through with that stuff, it's been so long."

Naomi didn't want to talk about Sly's fits, much less remember them. She said, "He has another woman?"

"Yes, he has another woman. A milk-faced little redheaded slut who works at the test range."

"You know her?"

"No. She's some cop's daughter or something. Corinne. Fucks anything that moves." A feral light entered Sly's eyes, so weird it shone in the dark.

Naomi's bowels sank so far it was hard to speak. "I see."

"I ought to do her in and save the world from gonorrhea. Everybody's slept with her, even faggoty Dick Staples. Or else I should kill Stan. Maybe his crazy little kids too."

"Don't talk silly."

"I mean it, Mom." Sly's voice was as sincere as an airline hostess's. "Stan is my husband before God. He's the father of my children. None of them may be worth throwing out, but no one else has a right to them or their craziness but me."

"Disembowel her, then! Do it in his bed! Spread her guts on the covers and her red hair like a fan on his pillow. Let him find her like that. That will bring him back to you! Where in hell do you get those ideas, anyhow?"

Sly sighed and quirked half a smile. The light in her eyes drained away. "You're right, mom. But." She gripped the steering wheel and started the motor. "But I love Stan and he's my husband. And I don't know whether I'm more angry at him or his whore."

Naomi hadn't given up on sweet reason. "Sly, if your marriage were going to work, you and Stan would be happy by now."

Sly drove the truck onto the street. "Meaning what?"

"Just that it isn't working."

They passed an art center and a museum half hidden by trees. The ground rose. It began to snow; scattered lace in the headlights. They were over seven thousand feet high, a cold, thin element of its own that snuck into the cab beneath the whoosh of the heater on their feet.

Naomi asked, "What about the kids? Are they all right? God, I wanted to see you last night."

"They're a little shook up, but yes they’re okay. When Stan and I got loud, Rosalia‒that's her real name, not Rosie, shut the doors into our wing."

"How loud?"

"Okay, wild." Sly grinned into the spill of the headlights. "I put a bunch of snakes into his pants."

"Hurt him?"

"No. When I came out of my fit, he was laughing."

"Laughing?"

"Yeah. Then he left. He laughed and left, tra-la. Waving a stupid snake."

"Any rattlers?"

"No."

They were in a long meadow wide and big enough to hold a town. The San Francisco Peaks were to their right, but the storm had smacked into them and hid the slopes. At the end of the meadow lay the woods which shielded Naomi's house. They entered the side road, then a dirt drive that went downhill, around a quick little curve to the left, and into the front yard that was all parking space because it was covered with pine needles and nothing would grow.

Naomi had forgotten about wanting to be home because by this time she was remembering Ira's smile. She sat with her hand on the door, addressing the windshield. "Damn, I'm tired of this hidey-hole! You know, sometimes I wonder what it's all about, and how many other people are running around hiding the fact that they're alive." She patted Sly's hand on the steering wheel. "You could use a drink; come on in. Give me that talk we would have had last night."

Sly pulled the keys from the ignition. "Good idea."

"I have gin, or rum. Which?"

"Gin. Rum. Whichever."

Sixty

The porch steps squeaked and the screen door slapped at their heels. Inside the clammy porch the air smelled of sawn oak. The women watched the snow drift between the trees before they entered the house, their hands touching.

Neither of them could relax enough to talk, so Naomi read at Ira's manuscript as Sly paced, lit a fire in the fireplace and started the oil burner in the bedroom wing for good measure. She rummaged in her mother's kitchen for chips and dips to go with their drinks, and brought them to the coffee table by the hearth. She paced.

Naomi set Ira's manuscript aside and reached for a corn chip, frowning. "Shit."

Sly's jerky pacing slowed down. "What's wrong?"

"This bastard denied ever writing."

"You think he lied?"

"And jimmied my truck because he wanted to get me alone. He pumped me for my address."

Sly stopped pacing. Naomi went on.

"He's no novelist, with all this crap about hopping around with snakes in his mouth. But I'll lay you fifteen cents he's no accountant; he's written too many reports. This is the writing of a long-time bureaucrat."

"Who is he?"

"Ira Goetz. He was in the coffee shop with me just now." Naomi watched the snow drift beyond the wood porch.

Sly took the opposite wing chair. "He looked Hopi," she said.

Naomi put down the corn chip and sighed. "His dad was Jewish."

"The guy who's following me looks like him, but without the hair. Looked like your guy wore a wig."

"You've seen him? The one who's following you?"

"Yes. He doesn't know it, though. He limps."

Oh, God.

"Sly, did you put Peakspore in the stove out at the hogan? And last night, did I burn it up?"

The question had come too quickly. Sly scooted onto her spine and perched her stockinged feet on the coffee table. "No," she said. "You know I quit working with Peakspore after I started our herd. And I didn't put coke in there either, if you're asking about a smell."

"Babe, I had to ask. I didn't smell it until I was outside, and it was either Peakspore or cocaine. I'll bet on Peakspore." Sly held her gaze. "Really, I need to know. This is mom speaking."

"It doesn't sound that way. It sounds like you're never going to forget I made it to help Stan, or that when Clive died the police accused me of dealing coke." She got pathetic. "Mom, I was under a lot of stress! I'd just lost my twin brother in a very awful accident, and I was accused of causing his death. Then I got married, and I was pregnant with twins. It's no wonder I helped Stan make Peakspore; I love him, and Old Thunder just sort of petered out. Excuse the bad joke. You wouldn't talk to me any more than dad or grandma would, so I helped my husband, and we built up the ranch and had babies. All that, with Stan's violent father in and out of the loony bin, and his uncle dying around then."

Patiently: "Yes, Sly. But someone put something into that stove, and I burned it up without knowing it."

"And it had to be me, mom? Because of what I used to do? I mean, excuse my past! Puberty hit me kinda hard!"

"Sly, you and Dustin are the only people who know where that place is. And going by the smell, it was either cocaine or Peakspore in my stove." Naomi propped her elbows on her knees and hunched, fiddling with her fingers and fighting back tears. "I thought I'd die. Listen. Professional Hopis like Ira Goetz don't flirt with Anglos in public. They don't come into a coffee shop and lean forward, confidential, to ask about an Anglo's children. And smile. Ira Goetz limps." She looked up. "Do you see?"

Sly did. After a minute she said, "Crap. It really is the guy who's following me. A cop. Must be in a wig."

A Janis Joplin tape had been whining from across the room. "Freedom's just another word..."

Naomi said, "He must have been at the hogan when I showed up. And he would have been watching for you."

"Why me?"

"Because he's been following you. Or maybe he was there to find out who would pick up that stuff, whatever it was. You have a prior. From a distance, we look alike."

"Mom..."

"Well, you're out there every other day or so, and no one else knows the place is there except Dustin. So if Ira was at a distance, staking out the hogan..." She thought for a second. "He's been hanging around me too, though, for about a week. He's got to be a cop. He's got to know you and me both."

"Yeah, unless..." Sly was still slumped and sitting on her hands, her chin against her chest. "Listen, mom. Maybe he caught up with you. You've never stayed in one place this long. Maybe he found you."

"No. He was staked out, and he couldn't have expected me to be there unless you told him. He saw me at the hogan, believed I was connected to the Peakspore, and traced the license on my truck. So he showed up at the office today because the truck belongs to the business."

She waited for Sly to speak. Instead the girl rose, arching backward to stretch with her fists against her kidneys. "Yeah." Incongruously, she grinned.

"Sly, I'm as anonymous as a Mormon around here! It's been twelve years since I wrote anything more than a postcard. I don't react, I don't even flinch when someone says 'Naomi'. And the last federal agent I spotted was in California." She took a drink and held it in her mouth, feeling it against the back of her teeth.

Sly was drawn to her full, improbable height, so taut she would have twanged with a pluck. Naomi went to her. She could not bring herself to embrace, but neither could she prevent her hand from reaching up to her daughter's young-old face.

Sly said, "You think he didn't arrest you because he's looking for me."

"Probably, but I don't know."

Sly resumed pacing. "I didn't put anything into that stove! I don't make Peakspore!" She stopped walking and started again. "Damn! Why won't you believe me?"

"Don't you think I want to believe you? Sly, loving you is right up there with breathing!"

"No! I think you're after some kind of maternal...oh, Christ." Sly got her glass and poured an inch of rum into it, set it down untasted, and faced her mother. "Go ahead, mom. Tell me why you don't believe me."

"Because." Naomi assessed Sly's strained face, the dark hair escaping from the tight little bun, the quiver around her mouth, but the words overcame her love. "Because all right, because you did make Peakspore at Dustin's and give it to Stan when you ran away with him. Because you still play secret voodoo games and deny it. Because you and Stan have violent fights and only he admits to them. Because you rave about killing his children. Because you spilled wine at ten o'clock this morning."

Sly laughed a harsh laugh and stood beside the window to the wood porch. She watched the snow. "It's piling up out there. Must be a couple of inches already."

"Yeah, it's a cold world."

The fire had never caught. Sly went to the fireplace and began rearranging logs and kindling. Naomi watched her jerky movements. The flame started bright yellow, flared, then settled in to burn wood. After a long time Sly told her mother, speaking over her shoulder as she squatted, "You're right about the Peakspore. That's what he found."

Naomi gripped the bar beside the bookcase, afraid that if she moved, Sly would stop talking. "Yes?"

"This morning, after you left. I didn't put it there, but I could smell it when I arrived. That's why I was drinking when I called you. After that fight with Stan, I tried to meet you. The stuff had all burned up. Someone was taking away the ashes."

"Did you see who?"

"No."

"Christ." She stood facing the books.

"That's right," Sly said. "The police must have found you. Because someone put Peakspore in your stove and then called the cops. You live off-rez; they'll call in the feds."

"And I've spent my life hiding."

"Maybe you should have moved. Mom? I didn't do it."

"All right."

"And I don't make Peakspore."

"Okay."

"I can't tell you what happened, except what I saw. Someone parked near the hogan, 'way back from the cliff. I passed his Jeep and went down to see what was happening. It was just about daylight, but he had the lamp lit to see inside. I saw him bending over the stove with the shovel we use to clean out the ashes. He had a tin box on the floor and was putting the ashes into it. I ran."

"Right."

"He wasn't the guy who's following me; I can't tell you any more. Maybe Stan can find out for you."

"Why Stan?"

"Because it was a Jeep. Look at me! Because it was a Jeep. It could have come from the test site, where Corinne works!"

Naomi still didn’t make the connection to Ira’s daughter; she’d only heard the name one time. She wiped at her eyes and turned from the books. "A military Jeep?"

"I think so."

"Did you write down the license number?"

"No. Like I said, I ran."

"Okay." Naomi went to a wing chair and sat. "I'll think of something."

"No. Let me take care of it, mom. I'll have Stan ask Corinne. And I'll tell dad to call the cop off. What's his name again?"

"You can't do that. It'd call attention to me again."

"Hey, mom! We're being framed!"

Naomi flared. "What in almighty hell does that mean? I have no one at all, and this idiot Hopi cop has found me! You have a husband, a wealthy father-in-law, and a powerful father with a whole flock of lawyers working for him! And I'm supposed to trust a witch and her infantile husband with my future? Risk letting those paranoids into my life again? Or should I buy another set of ID and start running? Again?" She glared. "Christ, I realize that now my symptoms are easing off, they don't want to test my body anymore, but do you think they don't want to throw me into jail?"

"Mom..."

"I'm going to handle this! I'm going to find out who put that stuff in my stove, and I'm going to get him. And if you pull one single string, I'm gone!"

"Jesus."

Naomi had seldom seen her daughter so pale, or her eyes so frightening. She didn't mean it, but she said, "Sorry to be rough."

Sly shook her head with a painful smile. "Point taken, Mom. I was the crazy one. I'll give you a couple of days." She gulped rum.

"You'll give me all the time I need," Naomi told her. "If it's not working, you'll soon find out."

Sly chuckled and the voices began screaming in Naomi’s head.

"Dead on," Sly said.

Sixty-one

The next morning Naomi pulled into Sly's driveway after circling the block to look for men in parked cars. She carried a new box of Legos and had an excuse for her presence. No one answered the bell. She rounded the porch and moved to the fence that divided the front and back yards, still clutching the toys. She heard chanting:

"...the serpents from the fetid bowels of the earth to come, to smite him with festering pain and agony to the death that knows no end! May the resistless power of my voice and annihilating power of my wrath cause them, all sinuous and writhing, to come! All fanged with piercing hatred may they come! May they bring the venom of hate! May they bring the poison and fearful pain of torment! May they bring the doom and fetor of the soul! May they..."

Naomi shoved through the gate. On the porch stood Sly in her black robe, her face and arms upraised to the sun. Her yard sported a weedy crop of emerging, tongue-flicking reptiles.

"Morning, love! I thought I heard your voice!" She waved the bright box of toys. "I picked these up for the twins. Think they're ready for them?"

Sly turned a ghastly puffed face, her neck scrawny, her hair snaking over her features. She lowered her arms and squinted at her mother. "I guess."

"Where are they? I want to see if they'll use them."

"Their bedroom. Rosie's putting them down for their nap."

The phrase was ominous. "Putting them down?"

"Why aren't you at the office?"

"Slow day, love; Wanda's there. How about some lunch? May I go in?"

"Sure."

The back door let into the laundry room. The dryer was working; the air was like a swamp. "Sorry I didn't call first," Naomi said, "but it was one of those spur-of-the-moments..."

"You're spying on me."

Sly had followed her. Naomi set the Legos on the dryer and turned. "If you like."

"What did you think you'd find? Stan's mutilated body? A lab full of dat ole debbil elixir?"

"I wasn't sure. You were upset last night, so I got worried."

"About me?"

"Yes. I scouted around the neighborhood on the way in. I didn't see any..."

"He was already here. I scared him away."

Naomi paused. "Who do you mean?"

"The dumb investigator from last night. I waved my wand at him and he disappeared. You want to worry about someone though, you'd better worry about Stan's whore. Because she moved in with him. She's living in my house on our ranch."

Naomi tried not to react. "How do you know?"

"He called me. He was bragging."

Naomi quailed, believed it, wondered whether Wellesley was serious about Ira. "That's rough, love," she said.

"You don't need to sound so cold about it!"

"I don't mean to."

"And don't call me love! You know nothing about the subject!"

Naomi took a deep breath. "Perhaps not. Will you talk to me? Just let me know what I can do?" Silence. "It's hot in here; can we go into the living room?" Wellesley gave an ugly smile and turned back to the porch. "Go ahead. You'll like it." Naomi saw the girl's arms raise again to the sun. The chant resumed. Naomi entered the kitchen, then the living room.

Sly had savaged each couch, love seat and armchair. Chunked foam and ripped magazines covered a shredded oriental rug. Glass-topped tables were splintered. Worse, the plaster walls were scored as if by claws, with trails of blood fuzzed at their edges. Crazy; beyond reach. Naomi's fingers trembled so hard she had trouble dialing the phone: Stan’s ranch, Dustin's lab, the hospital. As she described the situation she could hear rhythmic sounds from her grandchildren’s room. The noise echoed into the hall; thump, creak, thump; thump, creak, thump. Head-banging.

The young housekeeper entered from the hall, all dark eyes and a white orlon cardigan. "Díos," she breathed, "I'm leaving."

"I don't blame you, I'm sur..."

"That lady is crazy."

"I'm her mother. I just called the hos..."

"She scares the shit outta me, and I mean it, man. I would've called the cops, you know? but I was scared of what she'd do to the kids. And those kids? Those one-year-old kids? You know what they do?"

"I have an idea."

"You go on in there, you'll find out. I stayed, but just till somebody showed up." Rosalia was gone.

Silently willing peace, Naomi strode to the nursery and opened the door. The chaos inside was palpable, almost visible. One corner of the pretty wrought-iron partition was bent free of the wall and vibrating.

"Okay Clive! Jimmy!" she commanded, "Back off! Simmer down! We're going for a ride as soon as your daddy gets here."

The twins were in their cribs, beautiful blondes with black eyes and brows. They were each separated from the partition by well over six feet, and from one another by twelve. At her confident presence their panic diminished; the partition stopped thrumming.

"I know you're afraid. Mommy doesn't feel right, so daddy and I will take good care of you until she gets better. You can't fight though, and you have to start talking. Want me to open the curtains so you can see?" Pause. "I thought so; how's that? Get dressed, darlings. Here; wear your new jackets." She handed out clothes and lowered the sides of the cribs; folded back the useless partition. It was warm to the touch.

The Indian Center sent two men in an ambulance. Ira, unashamed and competent, drove. She wanted to shout from her car, "See what you've done? See the harm?" But she nodded and gathered her anger, strapping the twins' infant seats into her truck so they could see out the windows as she drove. She called to the men, "She's in the back yard. She can be violent."

"We won't hurt her, ma'am," the other man said.

"Are you a doctor?" He and Ira were already moving. "Do you know how to sedate her?"

"She'll be fine."

Ira paused. "I know how you must feel, Jeannie."

Naomi spat. "I'll follow you to the hospital with her husband."

The other man had gone through the house; Ira joined him. Naomi heard a scuffle, then a man's startled shout.

Sixty-two

Dustin met her and Stan in an institutional waiting room at the hospital in Tuba City. He was changed; his mouth was bracketed by sour lines; his eyes measured everything and found it wanting. Cautious of rejection, Stan didn't offer to shake his hand. Dustin looked around and sat. "Where are the children?"

"In Jeannie's truck with a friend, sir," Stan said. "My fiancée. We all traveled together. The twins are frightened, of course."

Dustin threw him a look. He ignored the reference to "fiancée." "Do you think so?"

"They're crying a lot. It's no more than natural, without their mother."

Naomi interrupted: "They're happiest outdoors, Dustin."

"I've never seen them, but I doubt that they're frightened."

Stan said, "I understand, sir. When their mother is released perhaps we can, uh, discuss their future. My life has become complicated, and of course the children are better off with Sly."

Naomi watched the men, edgy as a cat in a kennel. "You'll have to take the children to Winslow with you," she told Stan. Stan looked as if this were a new idea.

"All right," he said, "We'll keep them until Sly is released."

Dustin stood and said, "I've spoken to the doctors, and we can't see Wellesley. There's nothing we can do; I'm going."

"Dustin."

"It's been a long time, Jeannie. I hope you're well."

"Dustin, we have to talk."

"I expect a conference call at home."

"It's imperative that we talk. Now."

She manufactured her Peakspore look and hoped he recognized it. He assented with a grunt: "Come along. I’ll get you home tomorrow afternoon."

"Here are the keys to my truck," she told Stan, and tossed them. "I'll pick it up at Sly's."

The road west from Tuba City and Moencopi begins ugly in ash-greys and gets uglier; Naomi had never made friends with this part of The Beautiful Land. Dustin drove fast with his eyes squinted against the snow glare. They seldom spoke. At a hand-lettered sign pointing to dinosaur tracks he pointed with his mouth. "Local tourist industry."

"Umh."

Naomi thought about Stan and his army of boys, now working for him on his ranch. She thought about his obsessed, fragile father, also living at the ranch. She thought about Sly as little as possible and began to feel anguish, desperate and final. She would not cry.

The rising pavement reached the black-lace chaparral standing against Echo Cliffs. The cliffs were reddened by sunset. "Remember this place?" she asked, being cheery. "My truck broke down here. You came and got me and the kids."

"Yes. Mr. and Mrs. Nelson called me from Page with the message."

"You remember their names? They were from Ohio, just driving by and saw that I was stranded. Then you came. We sat over there and I drank cappuccino from the thermos. There were lizards everywhere. The kids tried to catch one."

"A good day."

"Yes."

They took the cutoff and climbed into the sky. After a stretch they entered Page.

"Dustin, can we eat? We won't get to your place for another hour."

"All right. Cortez's still has Navajo tacos." Navajo tacos were fry bread covered with taco fixings and a full round steak.

"I'd forgotten them."

"I'll buy, one apiece. You have to finish yours." He glanced toward her, teasing, unbending just enough to show no hard feelings.

Her eyes filled; she blurted her fear: "Those doctors won't cure Sly, back there. They'll trank her for a while and let her go." He was maneuvering a corner, checking traffic from the left. His shoulders tensed. Naomi slogged on. "She called Stan 'Jason' when those men were taking her away. Last night she talked about killing him and his girlfriend. And the children. The children use telekinesis."

They passed three adjacent churches and pulled up to Cortez's. Dustin said, "Jason?"

"Yes. She raves about vengeance and honor, that sort of thing."

"I see." His long fingers twitched at the keys in the ignition before he cut the motor. He stared through the windshield.

"Do you? She keeps talking about being a stranger in a strange land out there at Winslow. She quotes the Old Testament or Castañeda or whatever she reads. She has it in her head that this marriage has alienated her from herself." She knew she was prattling. Worse, she heard the cadence of her speech; it was just like Grace's.

"How long has it been happening?"

"A month, maybe two. Since their last break-up."

"And the telekinesis?"

"I've no idea; maybe just today."

"I understand. But we'll eat before we talk. We'll handle it." His manner brightened and he tapped her knee with heavy, awful playfulness. "It's taco time!"

Sixty-three

Sometimes the low sky on Gray Mesa can suffocate. Tasi Skizzi looms. There is one solitary tree visible from the road, and it is a black skeleton. Dustin's house appeared gradually, larger than Naomi remembered, with many outbuildings. She was reminded that Dustin was a lot more than a chemist.

"Nothing's changed," he told her.

"No new pens? Nothing?"

"I've been gone a lot."

"How is Grace?"

"The same. She doesn't blame you."

"I was beginning to love her."

He pulled into the yard. Grace, round as a stone, appeared at the doorway and waited for them with her hands under a printed apron.

"Does she ask about me?"

"She waits."

Naomi felt a lightening from inside.

He was in time for his conference call, which was short. His desk was behind the leather couch now, facing the fireplace. It was littered with environmental impact reports and tribal surveys. Naomi talked with Grace beside the fireplace, held the other woman's plump hands and smiled without realizing it.

Sly called; Dustin answered.

"I know," he said, and, "I understand." His voice was gentle. "It's good to hear you, too. Yes, too long." He listened, nodding. "Tuesday? Yes, I can be there." Then sharply, "No. There must be no...Wellesley, you're raving. Don't rave." Pause. "The children are fine." He shifted to see Naomi, then shifted back. "That's better. Your mother is here." Longer pause. "She had no choice, Wellesley. No, she didn't..."

It went on. He spoke to an attendant, advising extra-strength tranquilizers and explaining his expertise. At last he hung up.

"She's panicky," he said.

Naomi said, "Yes." She watched him finger a bound report. "Does she remember what happened?"

"At first she did, but then she began to rant."

"She's a real mixed-up girl," Grace said.

"She was a lot better until yesterday," Naomi answered.

Dustin picked up the phone and put it down. "The trouble is, her kind of sickness can’t be found in the psychiatric lexicon."

"She can be calmed down, son," Grace said. "I've known lots of girls with female trouble."

His face went blank. "Female trouble?"

Grace nodded and folded her arms under her breasts: she had spoken.

Dustin rubbed at his face. "A sing, you mean. You think would that help."

"You can afford one."

"But it wouldn't do any good. Not enough good, anyhow."

Naomi interrupted them. "Neither will the hospital."

"Well, bring her up here," Grace said, "her and the babies. I never get to see them. And we could have a sing anyway. She'd like it."

They ate good food in the large kitchen. The chili was hot, the crackers home-made. Naomi made a flan with peaches on top. Grace retired as soon as the dishes were washed.

Dustin waited for Naomi by the fireplace. He looked lonely. She lost the thread of her rehearsed speech and wandered near the hearth.

"Why do we have to talk?" he asked.

"Peakspore," she began, and was seized by reticence as if he were a stranger. She checked to see that he was listening. "Sly's been using the hogan a lot. Peakspore wound up in the wood stove the other night, but I believe Sly when she says she didn't put it there. We think it was supposed to be picked up there to be sold. I burned it up without knowing it. She smelled the smoke a little later."

Dustin was attentive. "What did you do then?"

"I ran."

"Are you sure it was Peakspore?"

"Pretty much. Maybe it was coke, but I think it was Peakspore and Sly agrees. But here's why I had to talk to you: yesterday, that's the morning after I burned the stuff, a policeman came to my shop. I think he's a policeman, anyway. If he is, I'm afraid he'll find out who I am. We're acquainted through the hospital, and he came to the kinaaldá. Ira Goetz. Says he's an accountant."

"Of course I know Ira."

"He resembles the ranger you called off for me years ago, but now he has a limp. I described him to Sly, and she says he's been following her. I think it’s what put her over the edge."

"Has Wellesley seen him, then?" Dustin asked.

"Yes, apparently. She also saw another man at the hogan that night. She came to meet me, but I was gone. She smelled the smoke‒remember that stench?‒and peeked in. Someone was putting the ashes into a box, but it wasn't Goetz." Talking made Naomi easier; she sat down. "I think Ira Goetz found out where the Peakspore was and waited to see who would pick it up. He got my license number from the truck and traced it to my office."

"He must not pursue it," Dustin said.

"So I have problems."

"No, I can stop it." He smiled. "I'm glad you came to me, Naomi. I'm glad you still trust me."

She shrugged. "You're the only person I can."

"I'll get with Ira and see that he backs off. We'll bring the children here Tuesday with Sly. She can't get into trouble that way, and mother can help."

Naomi was thunderstruck. "It's as simple as that?"

"For you, yes."

"How will Grace handle the babies' psi abilities?"

"We'll deal with that later."

Sixty-four

Naomi went home to a long tub, a stiff drink, and rock-and-roll. She recapped her night at the hogan and the meaning of whatever she had burned: Ira's arrival in her office and his excuse for doing it; The babies' developing weirdness; Sly's explosion into madness. No use blaming Ira for that, she realized; Sly's fuse had been lit a long time before.

She considered prison, assuming it was her best-case scenario, then considered an alternative stay in a Mexican village in Sonora. After the bath she listened to ZZ Top, then listened again. "And this man / played his hand / and he lived by the luck of the draw..."

The phone rang and she picked up the one by her chair.

"How is your daughter?"

Ira. She flinched, then forced herself to be calm; she couldn't be smart and mad at the same time. "Better, I think. It's good of you to call."

"I got your number from Wanda. She put up an argument, but I told her about taking Wellesley to the hospital and she gave in." He paused. "How are you taking this?"

"I'm all right. I guess Sly's commitment was inevitable."

"Is that what you call her? Sly? Yeah; it's hard."

"That's how it is with a grown daughter..." Naomi pulled a private face at the word 'grown' to describe a seventeen-year-old. "...there's not much you can do. You want to be a parent, but it's too late. And maybe you know about wishing you were smarter about child-rearing."

"I do," he said. "I've often wondered whether I could have helped more with my oldest."

"Drugs?" She sounded sympathetic; it made her proud.

"No. It's always been, uh, men. Of course my problems in raising her weren't gen..."

Silence, a vacuum waiting for whatever suspicious word she might say. She made her voice cozy instead of releasing it: "genetic" She asked, "What are you doing?"

"Hanging out. I just baked a terrific lasagna."

Naomi chuckled warmly. She tossed her damp hair over a wing of her chair and licked her pouting lower lip. Her voice went husky. "Do you really live out there on the east slope of the mountain? There isn't even TV reception."

"Sure I do. It's my home."

"But there's nothing to do for excitement."

"Sure there is. I have my typewriter."

"I forgot. I bet you write in the evenings, don't you?" One sexy leg draped itself over her chair arm.

"Every night. Someday I'll do it well." She imagined him hunched over a typewriter, writing her up for his boss. "Subject is a female Caucasian of indeterminate age. No apparent identifying marks or scars. Speech is educated and deliberately slangy..."

"Lasagna, huh?" she asked. "What kind of cheeses did you use?"

"Cheddar."

"No good. You have to use Italian cheeses."

"Hey, my lasagna's good! It's my specialty!"

"Yeah?"

"I learned how to make it in Italy."

Warm, deep chuckle. "With cheddar?"

"I'll feed you some. You can judge for yourself."

"Sounds good."

"How's tomorrow night?"

"Why not? Shall I bring some Chianti?"

"Seven o'clock?"

"Got it. And Ira, thanks for calling."

"My pleasure."

She spent the rest of the evening painting her toenails. And even though Dustin's big-time talk hadn't called Ira off, she gloated; he had come within a hair of mentioning Peakspore.

Sixty-five

Early the next morning Naomi drove into Ira's long, long drive to snoop, praying he wouldn't notice. "Blue truck, white snow, but there you are," she muttered. "If he’s home, I’ll think up something to say." His place was simple to find; it was the one she had fantasized about on the way out of town, a brown scatter of buildings with pines rising behind it.

She rounded the house and carport. Nothing. No one, not even a dog. No sheep in the pen, not for a long time or there'd be droppings. No smoke from the chimney. She knocked on the back door, called, looked at the yard and noticed old tire tracks in the snow. The early sun had widened and blurred them; he hadn't been here all night. She walked around the house and climbed the front steps to the veranda. The door was unlocked; she went in.

The room was as wide as the house, and almost as deep. There was a bed on one side with a pieced quilt in a lot of dark colors. Beside it, jackets and caps hung from pegs along the log wall. She recognized the cut of a green jacket and moved close, suddenly remembering Sean Colum. The jacket had a lot to tell her. Stitching had circled a patch on the arm that had been torn from the fabric. Yes, damn him, Sean.

She thought for a long time and felt lost indeed.

Or Ira.

Lost and helpless.

Telly, Dustin's Telly from Berkeley? The curious FBI agent who took a full dose of Peakspore?

That would explain why Dustin could influence a Hopi cop. Or for that matter, eliminate a "park ranger" in a green uniform.

Memories and connections engulfed her. She wanted to scream. Nineteen sixty-five: ultra-straight Sean Colum in the campus-police uniform and the strange pistol. Sean that night in Bayer's lab with the screeching test animals; earlier, at Tommy’s Joynt; earlier still, in the Mayor’s office; gay and languid in Clive’s‒her murdered friend Clive's‒apartment. Ira, the helpful Native American in Martinez after the riot at Safeway; Juan, the mustached guard at Delano. Average height, square-built, a physical everyman.

But his inside was kinked. And he had known where she was. Always.

She began to search the house. A couch and chairs were at the south end of the room, innocent. A wood desk faced the eastern entry four-square between them and the kitchen door. The wheeled captain’s chair sat with its back to a cold stone fireplace. The desk didn't hold much; the original manuscript of his novel was in the file drawer, stationery in the drawer above that; a couple of pencils, a gold LaCross pen, maybe a gift. That was all.

No; there was a little leather-backed book. She opened it and found the confirmation she hoped for. "Manny," said the top line of a page. Below were listed the color of contact lenses, length and angle of eyebrows with a drawing, height of heel lifts. She flipped to another page. Another. "Sean," it said. There were the same details of disguise. At the back, another list, with phone numbers for Macias, McMahon, Murphy. "Whaaat?" Then she realized they were the numbers she had called to reach him when she needed help.

She pocketed the book, moved to the bed table and opened the drawer. Yes. It was deep with photos, weighted by the sophisticated handgun he used so long ago. Gingerly she lifted it onto the table, then the ammunition clip, a shield-shaped badge, an identification card. Ira Talayesva Goetz. Of the FBI.

The photos she found under the ammunition were not surprising either, except that not a single one was recent. Snaps of herself; of Angela Davis; of Patricia Hearst, Squeaky Fromme. Women in hiding. Photos taken from street corners or fields or vacant lots, from cars. All the subjects wore the same haunted look.

She replaced everything, closed the drawer, and looked at the long snow field through the open front door. She waited for the blood-lusting animal in her to make its appearance. Instead, she was slightly nauseated, and she was tired. Almost to death.

Maybe after all she would; would just crawl sideways like a crab into someone else's home. Find a valley in Mexico or Canada, say, a pretty region of hills and grass. Give up trying to talk to, or understand, people. She thought of Sly's need and knew she couldn't.

The room was cold. She closed the front door, checked to see that nothing looked disturbed, and glanced at the empty kitchen as she shuddered through it to leave. Camp stove; a cold wood range beside it; a table with a white plastic tablecloth. She opened the back door.

Ira sat in her passenger seat. He wore a black Stetson hat with a concho hatband and a plaid Pendleton jacket. He rolled down the window. He removed his hat; no bangs, no pageboy. Sly had been correct about the wig. "Find anything?" he asked.

"Oh, that's very crisp, very cop, Ira Talayesva Goetz. Sean. You're good."

He opened the door and put his feet on the running board, the stoic Native American, his hands cupped over his knees. She recognized the white scar over his eyebrow.

He asked, "Shall I charge you with breaking and entering?"

"Why did you decide to approach me?"

"Ms. Walsh, the other day a pound of dry Peakspore was deposited in the wood stove at your hogan; have you heard of it? Peakspore? It's classified material, highly toxic in even minute doses, and vulnerable only to temperatures above two hundred degrees Fahrenheit. You drove to the hogan; got there about five in the evening, maybe a little before. Then you burned it. I'm supposed to learn why."

He was good; Naomi remembered the heavy badge and felt a pang of unease. "This is silly," she said.

"Why did you burn the chemical?"

"Why do you have snapshots of those women?"

"Why did you rifle my drawer?"

"I warmed my hogan and took a nap."

"Whom did you call out to before you entered?"

"Did I call someone?"

"Why do you keep a hogan?"

She shook her head and half laughed, denying the absurd situation. "Why? I like the location."

He snorted. "Nice view."

"With privacy."

"There's that." He became demanding again. "Why didn't you stay all night?" Naomi said nothing. "Ms. Walsh, why didn't you stay all night in your hogan?"

The first quaver entered her voice. "I had to go home."

"What did you and the other person do in there, without lights?"

"Why didn't you come and find out?"

"What deal did you make before you burned the material?"

"Why did you follow me and the twins all over California?"

"Answer my question."

"Look Sean, or Ira..." She paused, watching the corners of his mouth for signs of sympathy, or levity, or any human reaction. There was none, but his breath was a little shallow. His pupils were a little dilated. Arousal? Oh, God. But there was no coyote stench, no breeze, no alien voice in her head. She could read nothing about his feelings, nothing at all.

She went on. "I realize you're trying to bluff me, and maybe you're good enough to succeed. But you haven't arrested me, so I have to conclude that you won't, or maybe can't. Maybe you're no longer with the FBI. I'm cold." She twisted into the relative warmth of his kitchen and slammed the door behind her, heading fast for the...no; she had to stay, to learn what he wanted.

A little black-and-white snapshot of a pretty woman sat tilted on his refrigerator. "Dad, I love you. Corinne."

Naomi went near and squinted, looking for the resemblance as he followed her into the house. Sean, or Ira, or Dustin's friend Telly, was grim. He entered and indicated a wooden chair at the table. She sat. She tried to smile. "You invited me here in front of witnesses," she reminded him. "'Any time,' you said." She couldn’t take her eyes off that photo.

He was pumping fuel into the little stove. His sudden brogue was too weird, in the circumstance, to be either comic or comforting. "So I did, lass. Frankly, the FBI no longer needs your luscious body; there are other subjects." His brogue acquired the high-pitched breadth of a vaudeville turn. "...and faith, I found I couldna arrest a former confederate! Call me a sentimental fool." He dropped the brogue. He had admitted his identity, but hadn't lost his weird quality of intimacy, or of the willingness to harm. "Would you care for some coffee?"

"Yes."

"If you were a competent housebreaker, you'd have discovered that this coffee pot is warm."

"Housebreaking is a more complicated skill than television has led me to believe." He didn't lighten. "What do you mean, couldn't arrest me?"

"Sentiment. Really."

"I don't believe you."

The brogue returned. "Well then, say you're more sinned against than sinning."

"Sean, this isn't funny."

"Let's make it Goetz, all right? I'm used to that. Do you know where you lost me, Naomi? In Santa Rosa, during the four-car pileup as you drove off. I engineered that. I bet you didn't realize it."

"Of course not."

"You changed your pattern by leaving the state; that's what threw me off."

"I suppose so."

"I was supposed to bring you in when we first met."

"In the city hall?"

Goetz nodded. "Bayer's first human subject had disobliged him by walking out."

"But that was you, Goetz. The first human subject."

"That is a fact, but irrelevant. I was disinclined to cooperate, and my boss couldn't force me to do it. So Bayer wanted your body very much." He smiled to himself. "Literally speaking. He's a casebook monomaniac, isn't he? He had seen me in agony, seen me call snakes into his lab and thrash around on the gurney and even go blind, but he didn't bother to take a good look at my face. He actually didn't recognize me that night we broke into his house."

"So you didn't arrest me..."

"Because I believe Peakspore to be an evil thing, and Dr. Bayer to be an evil man."

Of all the poses she had seen him use, she reflected, this one was the most believable; he looked fanatical, he moved precisely, his voice had timbre.

"Where's your car?" she asked.

"At your mechanic's. They brought me out here."

She grinned. "You sabotaged my truck, but couldn't start your own?"

"It needed a tune-up. It would have been ironic though, wouldn't it?" He turned a demi-smile over his shoulder. "I wanted to get your address from the mechanic's order book." He fiddled with the flame adjustment.

"Why? And he won't give you my address."

"He won't have to. I'll follow you home. Will you give me a lift into town?"

"No."

"Just asking. And oh; I'm still an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assigned to northeastern Arizona. The answer to 'why?' is private."

"I'll bet."

The house was quiet. He stood across the table from her and listened for the coffee pot. At length it rumbled, ready to boil. He filled two mugs taken from a drainer on the sink. There were creamer packets labeled "International" and "Irish" in a bowl. "Free from Circle-K," he told her. He gave her a mug.

"Why are you following me if I'm not wanted?"

"Curious. And 'asking around' is nearer to the truth. I had no idea the hogan belongs to you."

"Huh!"

He finished his coffee and, opening a drawer in the table, pulled out a package of Sarah Lee breakfast rolls with frosting like sweetened library paste. "Do you want one?" he asked.

"Thanks. Asking around for what?"

He studied her. She studied him. She failed again to read anything; so much for ESP when you need it. She said, "I recognized you when you were playing Ranger Rick out by Wupatki, even without your Anglo haircut. Then life got complicated and I forgot you."

He lifted an eyebrow. "You wanted me in jail."

"So the sheriff pretended to arrest you."

He shook his head sharply. "I was arrested, thanks to our mutual friend on Grey Mesa, and then released by the Bureau for reassignment."

"Who removed the record? The sheriff or the FBI?"

"Was the record removed?"

"Then I called you in Ireland‒or wherever that phone number's hooked up to‒hoping I was wrong about the ranger. I needed someone to talk to."

"And afforded me an excellent tape recording which confirmed your children's' powers."

"Look, Goetz, I'm already afraid of you. But what is it? Why didn't you... I mean, yes, you got some sort of perverted kick out of following me. What caused it? Did my panic turn you on? My naiveté? And why, of all times, did you begin asking around and playing up to me now? Just what is it? What else do you want from me?"

He picked up a roll. "You wouldn't believe me."

"Try me."

"Your peace. And Peakspore, but that goes without saying."

"Bullshit. It was you who first declared it could change the entire human race."

"You burned it. You left that hogan in the middle of the night and ran like the fabled antelope when you smelled your own fire."

"So?" she asked.

"So there's bound to be more, and it's bound to be up for sale, and I'm bound by my profession to intercept it and give it to my bosses, thus buying peace for you. With possession of the compound, the government may forget their lingering questions about you. I want to know the extent of your knowledge; it will help me to find it."

"Go fish."

He took a long time to finish his roll. Then he walked to the counter and got a paper towel. He took elaborate care in wiping his fingers, standing behind his chair. Then he got her a paper towel too, and poured them each another cup of coffee. He remained standing.

He said, "My people report that someone in Winslow mixed up a batch of Peakspore, the real, original thing, in a powder. Someone took it to an isolated hogan in the middle of nowhere. You deny knowing about it, but you burned it up‒as you did once before. The agency's analyzing the ash to compare it to that of the Carquinez Straits fire. So far, it tests as essentially the same material." He watched her closely. Naomi did not move. He went on. "I can't figure out which surprises you more; that Peakspore can be powdered although it's sensitive to heat, or that it was in your stove. If surprise is what I'm supposed to infer from your expression."

She rose. "Come on. I'll take you to the garage."

"No answers for me, acushla? No offers to aid and abet?"

"None."

"Not even for your peace? Your freedom?"

"Peace and freedom; very funny."

"One other thing, Naomi." His flattened tone of voice stopped her in the doorway. "Right after you left, someone came to the hogan. Besides your daughter. He stayed for close to an hour. He was very disappointed."

She sighed. "How do you know he was disappointed?"

"He broke out all your windows, then pulled those pretty window boxes off your walls."

"A vandal."

"No; I'm thinking it was the seller, come for payment. He walked right down that wash and right into your hogan. When he left, he returned straight to his Jeep."

She forced herself to look toward him. He was leaning a bit forward, breathing just a bit quickly again. "Didn't you get that license number too?" she asked. "Listen; I know you dosed yourself with Peakspore, and that helps explain your initial hatred for the stuff, and the help you gave to me and the twins. I'm grateful, but I won't help you find it so the government can use it."

His pose relaxed and she stopped, recognizing that it signaled relief.

"Whoa! You don't want it for the Pentagon," she said.

"Wrong, Naomi."

"No, by God! You may be some frustrated joker excited by ladies in tr..." Despite herself her voice got caught in her throat. "But you're so hung up on this stuff that you'll do anything to get rid of it, the recipe, and the people who know how to make it. Look; I'll do almost anything to get rid of it too, but I won't murder people. You want to give the Pentagon a bunch of bodies!"

He shook his head. "Wrong."

"How can you deny it?"

He assumed a casual pose, rocking back on his heels with his clenched fists jammed into his pockets. "I've changed my mind," he said. "Use of Peakspore by the right people or agency against the right target is not evil. It's dangerous, but it isn't evil or criminal. Peakspore has limited, legitimate application."

"Bull. Listen, Goetz, those snapshots told me a lot. You'll enjoy following me in order to find whoever made that stuff. And you think scaring me is a safe exercise."

"It’s not?"

"While you were flirting with me the other day, squirming on your seat in the coffee shop and planning to terrorize me, and while I've been making panicky guesses and eating these crummy rolls of yours, you've got turned on. Bad."

He walked for the door. "Let's go," he said.

"Want to know why I know it's not safe? Clive, my dead friend in San Francisco, was a masochist. He was into scuzzy-filthy shit-smeared S-and-M, and he told me he fell for you, Goetz. Big-time. You were his soul-mate."

"Let's go," he repeated. But for a long time he looked at everything else except her.

Sixty-six

They didn't talk while she drove. A dirty-looking test cloud lay in the east, its top flattened by an inversion layer. Ira watched it spread. Naomi pulled in to the garage where Highway 89 hit old Route 66. He opened his door. "Will you be in your office all day?" he asked. "In case I think of some interesting questions?"

Naomi had lost her immediate fear of him. "I have to repair the hogan."

"Of course. I forgot."

"I'll be in town tomorrow, if I finish."

"Thanks for the ride."

He got out and she watched him enter the office of the garage. After a minute she turned off the motor and walked through the cold to a telephone kiosk. Wanda answered.

"We're swamped, but Susan, the one who knows Pagemaker Three? She showed up, and we'll make out. Stan just called; he wants to talk to you. He'll be at McDonald's for a while, out in East Flag. Maybe you can catch him."

"McDonald's? I'm across the road. Anything else?"

"Nothing big," Wanda said. "Sly called me last night from the hospital. Just blue, so I encouraged her to talk. I told her to call me again tonight."

Naomi's gratitude made her eyes smart. "You're good, Wanda. Listen; someone vandalized the hogan. I should fix the windows, but I'll come on in if you think that's better."

"No, Jeannie, go on out. It might snow tonight and then it'd get indoors." Naomi twisted in the open booth and saw Ira standing behind her. "Somebody else wants to use the phone, Wanda. Mr. Ball's first draft is ready, except the table of contents. Will you fix it before he comes in?"

"Sure."

"I'll call you tonight." Naomi hung up.

"It was the charm of your suffering," Ira told her. "I couldn't stay away."

"I'll bet."

"Were you talking about your daughter?" He lounged near enough to be imposing, far enough that Naomi couldn't accuse him of crowding her. He continued: "Because I heard the word 'McDonald's', and she lives in the neighborhood."

"Go away, Ira; you bother me."

"Good," he said, and smiled that perfect smile. She dialed Dustin's lab. When he answered she asked, without prelude, "Telly was Goetz, right?" She turned to watch Ira's reaction; nothing.

"Jeannie?"

"Of course."

"What a delightful surprise."

"Don't be sarcastic; this is serious."

Pause. "Yes, it was."

Ira half turned away, then stopped playing games. He listened intently.

"What do you know about him? Personally? Because he's coming on to me." Silence. Irked, she prodded Dustin's vanity. "Shall I go to bed with him?"

Long sigh. "Naomi, you wouldn't call me unless you were frightened."

"You’re absolutely right."

"Do you think he's investigating you?"

"Not any more."

"Does he act strangely?"

"Weird."

"All right," Dustin resumed. "In nineteen sixty-five he was considered a fair agent, not the best. He had a wife, some quirks; rigid personality, a delayed sex life. He wasn't likely to be promoted. I checked on him again when you were being stalked, just in case. He had divorced. He lived in Winslow."

"He's listening to me, but he can't hear you. What else did you learn about him?"

Another, deeper, sigh. "Grounds for divorce was mental cruelty."

"Yeah," Naomi said. "That doesn't say anything. How much control does he have? Or need?"

"Actually, I liked him well enough, but on the other hand, I was lonesome and he was another Indian from northern Arizona. This long after exposure to Peakspore, who can say? You and I are no measure, because he took so much more of the compound. I'd say he's unpredictable."

"Affirmative."

"Does he know about our relationship?"

"Up to a point."

"Why won't you speak my name? Don't you want him to know you're talking to me?"

"That's right."

"Don't tell him. I'll be right down."

"Don't bother; I won't be here."

She hung up. Ira didn't move, just studied her. Studied her with the compelling, commanding look only a Peakspore victim could acquire. Naomi smirked. "Nice talking to you, Mr. Goetz."

She felt his eyes on her hips as she walked away.

Sixty-seven

McDonalds sported no golden arches, and the drive-through was so genteely presented as to be difficult to find. Inside, the establishment was bright with decal Tiffany windows and plastic philodendrons. The seating area was divided by molded trellises into bays sheltering no more than six tables each.

Stan was in his usual booth, dressed in fresh jeans and a down vest. Blond, clean-shaven, except for his extreme height he resembled the ideal teenager. He was staring at the lumpen, fire-scarred mountain rising sheer across the highway.

"Mom! Good of you to come." He rose, re-settled and moved his breakfast litter toward the wall.

"How are you, Stan?"

He got right to the point. "I've got a problem, mom. I don't know whether you know the full situation about Sly and our children, but believe me, you can help." He waited for her to say "How?" She poured cream from a packet into her coffee, poked at her second breakfast roll with a plastic fork. He said, "You know, I've been staying at the ranch." Naomi nodded. "So I got a little out of touch with Sly and her...routine. With the children. I haven't been aware of how they were taking this separation." He hesitated. Another nod from Naomi. "Well, I've had my own responsibilities at the ranch, and you know what that entails. I'm tall pole in the tent."

"Delicate work," Naomi offered straight-faced, and took a bite of her roll. It was as tasteless as the one Ira had given her.

"It's delicate work if it's done responsibly," Stan gently reproved. "And it happens to be my career. A lot of things could go wrong."

"I can imagine." No, this roll was even more insipid. "What is it you want, Stan?"

"Well, as I say, I'm sort of out of touch with Sly and the kids. The ranch isn't paying its own way yet, and I've been busy with that, so when I came into town to see the twins the other night, naturally I was taken aback." His hand was so big his fingers overlapped when they circled his cup. He raised it to drink and watched for sympathy over its rim.

Naomi asked, "How long had it been since you visited the children?"

"The children?" He hesitated again. "Sly knew she was welcome at the ranch. She could have brought them."

"Buckled them down? Muzzled them? Or stopped every five minutes to let them run loose and howl the way they do?"

"Mom, Sly always has a home as long as I know her." He corrected himself. "So long as the children are under age."

"This is pointless, Stan. What do you want?"

"I'm trying to explain. I didn't know, believe me I had no idea things were getting out of hand with Sly. When I came by the other night the kids were huddled in their room with another new housekeeper, and Sly..." Stan showed his first genuine distress. He looked into his empty cup, then squinted at the ugly mountain behind Naomi's back. "Sly was crazy; I realize it now. Her pupils were tiny, and she was walking stiff as a zombie."

"And?"

"You know I'm right; she's not going to get well. I need for you to take the kids."

Naomi let out a disbelieving snort. "You want me to take your children?"

Stan got eager. "It would be the best thing. I could get joint custody with you, and Sly could visit them. She trusts you, and God knows, and you do, that I trust you. You're a hell of a mother." Naomi stared at her son-in-law. He said, "You see, I'll be marrying again, and Corinne is naturally concerned about... I mean, Winslow is a small community..."

"I'm a hell of a mother, Stan?"

Stan reached for her hand. "Mom, please. It's the best thing. I'm desperate."

She jerked her hand away. "You're the twins' father. You knew their genetic makeup even before you sired them."

"I thought you'd understand."

"I do."

Over the booth hung a cheap print of Mimbres pots and Indian corn. The colors were faded to pink and black with a mottled turquoise background. She and Stan contemplated it.

"Get me some more coffee, Stan."

"Cream, right?"

He left the bay and Naomi pivoted to look outdoors, then back. Disgust had been building; she grabbed her bag and found Stan in line. "I have to go to my hogan, Stan. The answer is no."

He followed her out. When she reached her truck he held her door shut with one big hand so she couldn't get in. "Consider the children, mom. Please!"

"Stan, I've raised my set of Peakspore twins." She shoved him aside and got in.

Balked, Stan revealed himself. As she drove away he wrenched at the door handle until it sprang from the door frame. The red light in his eyes haunted her for most of the drive.

Sixty-eight

The hogan was a heartbreaker, worse even that Sly's living room. Broken glass lay outside and the splintered window boxes, ripped from the walls like the door, rested on shards. Torn blankets, slashed pillows, broken pots and dishes lay beneath each window sash. Inside, it was worse. The mattresses from the wall bench oozed kapok. Everything movable or dislodgeable was moved or dislodged. Everything portable had been thrown or crushed. Even the benches had been pulled apart. Only the shell of the structure was intact.

Naomi opened the canted stove and inspected the firebox. It had been emptied, as Ira claimed, and by the looks of the scrapings, it had been done with the fire shovel. She wet a finger and applied it to the seam between floor and walls. Milky crystals clung to her skin.

How could he do it?

Because she was certain that the man Sly had seen here had to be the vandal and had to be Stan, and he had to be the person who brought Peakspore to this stove. To sell to Goetz. Crazy psychotic Goetz, who could send both she and Sly to imprisonment on a whim, or kill them for representing what he hated. Who else?

Panic dimmed the world and was swallowed, but then she saw her note to Sly; her mad daughter. Keening threatened to escape in a long banshee howl that, set loose, would last for as long as the world. But she retrieved the note. She straightened the chimney pipe. She chunked kindling into the stove, then logs, and started a fire. She straightened nails and hammered the benches back into the walls. She swept. And things maybe weren't tragic. Maybe when the door was rehung and the windows were in...

"God damn!" she screamed, and threw the hammer.

***

Stan came down the arroyo with the erect grace of a god. He carried a push broom. A hammer was hung from his belt. Naomi set down the window sash she was wrestling into place, the third, and warily watched him approach.

"How did you find this place?"

"Hi, mom! Thought you could use some help."

"Who told you my place had been trashed?"

"Whoa! Who did this? I just thought you were cleaning up." He set the broom against the wall.

"I said, how did you find this place?"

He left off his wondering appraisal of the mess. "Well, you headed north. I figured you'd build far enough away from town to be quiet, and that means somewhere between Smiley's Trading Post and Grey Mountain, so..."

"Stan, I needn't have built fifty miles from town for privacy. At least be plausible when you lie. Who told you how to find this place? It wasn't Wellesley, because this is where she hides from you."

He was awash in open, frank, earnest sincerity. "All right, you deserve the truth and I'll give it to you, mom. I always accepted that you tolerate my presence for Sly's sake, and I never pressured her about you. So no, she didn't tell me how to find your hogan. So‒how can I put this? Let's see; first of all, I don't like the Feds, mom; they've brought my family nothing but grief. I've always assumed that you don't, either."

"Jesus," she muttered, and brushed past him to enter the hogan. She sorted through the spilled contents of the food box‒the bottom layer was miraculously intact‒and found a bottle of Mateus rosé.

Stan's speech had continued as he followed her inside. "I want to be frank with you, mom. We both know about Dustin's involvement with my father in Berkeley, and their government contracts to experiment with Peakspore. We both know what it was supposed to be for, for mind control." She nodded, sipping wine from a cup. "What I'm leading up to is this; an agent of the FBI told me where to find you, so I drove on up. And in light of your legal status, I want to know why you were hanging out with him. Also how he found my car, and why he was asking about my children."

Naomi blinked. She set down her wine. "Why did he tell you where I was?"

Stan cut in. "You acknowledge it, then. Do you know what he said? He said the Pentagon would buy my children." Stan was impressed. "He offered me money. Of course I put two and two together, and realized why you won't take them. You cut a deal with him, didn't you? You led him to me so you wouldn't go to jail."

"Don't be silly! What do you mean, 'buy'?"

"Don't be coy, mom; I don't like it."

"And I don’t like patronizing when it comes from a pup! Do you expect me to believe such crap? Now, tell me what the man said! And try to be precise. The government buying babies! What in the name of..."

Stan rose to his full, intimidating height. "I never lie!" he lied. "Your agent friend told me the federal government wants Peakspore and legal custody of the twins. And of Sly, too. It was a lot of money!"

She twisted away from the sight of him‒"Jesus!"‒and realized that the boy hadn't been the vandal, that it wasn't he who filled her stove with Peakspore, and that this morning was his first meeting with Goetz. That Goetz had followed her to McDonald's and thus found Stan. She let herself onto a bench and began to rock, believing the boy’s grotesque story.

Stan became watchful. "You didn't know this? Really?" he said.

"Of course not!"

"I figured it was part of the deal you made. They'd forget about you, and you'd lead them to me and the children."

"Lord. Goetz said nothing to me about it. At all."

"Then why did you tell him I was in McDonald's?"

"Stan, I didn't; the subject never came up. He followed me."

"Well then, what did you talk about?"

She waved it aside. "He hired me to read a book he wrote."

Unexpectedly, Stan grinned. "He writes?"

"Poorly."

"I believe it," he said. He dropped his grin. "Anyway, he said it's not like the sixties anymore, where they could just kidnap a guy, you know, and waste him or deport him. Now they have a fund just for this kind of thing, where they can buy cooperation. And if they can get hold of someone like you, or better, Sly, who's grown up with Peakspore genes, and then watch her kids..."

"Stan, you're overlooking something that should be obvious: You are a Peakspore kid. If they want Sly and the twins, what do you think their plans are for you?"

He looked surprised. He rubbed his big face. "I haven't had enough time to sort out the details..."

"For the love of all that's holy, Stan, think! Why did Dustin and I not want you and Sly to get together?"

Stan was fiddling with the label on the wine jar, picking it off a piece at a time. Wind whined in the dead lupine on the roof and at the open doorway.

"Have some of that," she said. "There's a clean mug in the box. You did know that Corinne is his daughter, right? Goetz, the FBI man? And he was exposed to a full, undiluted dose of Peakspore?"

Stan was refusing the wine; he stopped in mid-gesture. A little grey snake headed from the door toward his boot.

"No," he said. Then as the news sank in and his eyes got that crazy light he cried, "No!"

"Yes!"

Shameful satisfaction, perverse triumph.

"He's going to get the next batch of Peakspore you make at your ranch, then pick up the lot of you; your twins, Wellesley, and you for the Pentagon. He didn't have to ask me who you are, he already knew. He was just sounding you out back there. Your whole new shiny romance with your shiny new fiancée is a setup, start to finish."

Stan was stunned; she could almost pity naiveté so profound. She rose and wandered outside, scuffing dirt with her boots.

She heard him follow. He wasn't running, or even moving swiftly, was not a threat. Instead, his steps were uncoordinated. She stopped at the edge of the wash. Stan crossed its sandy bottom, his shoulders bunching, his big fists balled. He quickened his steps to a lope and crested the farther bank in a spray of sand. Still gathering speed, he ran bellowing toward the cliffs, leaping, hurling rocks in a fury of frustration, watching them shiver against the lavender and gray sandstone. He reached a notch and rested his forehead against a stone shoulder, at that distance a small figure. He turned. "I'll leave now," he called.

"What will you do?" she called back.

"Get the kids. Talk to dad and Corinne." He chuckled and it was scary. "Set them straight."

Then serpents rose against him, sinuous, and writhing, and fanged. Not sluggish from winter, but warm and active. At first two rattlers‒"Stan! Watch out!"‒then others. They were all around him. From burrows. From beneath rocks. From across the tan, snow-splotched wash. Dozens, then scores, then hundreds. There was a buzz of rattles, a hiss of slither on sand.

A sandstone pimple, larger at the top like a mushroom, was just ahead of him. He heaved the hammer from his belt, leapt onto the rock kicking snakes, and drew his belt from his jeans. He flung it like a whip. The buckle sliced and threw off a fanged head. "Get my gun!" he yelled. "The jeep!" He slashed again. Again.

But Naomi was frozen in a scream. The snakes continued to come, grey and yellow and so numerous their stench reached across the wash to the hogan. Their trails crossed and curved and merged at the base of the rock. They hissed and struck, recoiled and struck. When Stan lost his belt he seized a writhing corpse and whipped them with that, his back bent, his arm flailing in front, to the sides. Snake bodies flew, spasming and piling up around the stone. And more serpents came. Naomi's throat could no longer scream. She began to vomit.

She didn't know when it ended, when Stan had killed every snake that would come, and had run howling to his jeep in a misery of horror.

Sixty-nine

Driving can be therapy if practiced cross-country. Naomi didn't so much drive as idle her truck across the Coconino plateau, touching the wheel from time to time to avoid a juniper. Against the horizon, the standing woman buttes followed her south. She thought she would relive Stan's battle forever.

"All right." She cleared her throat because her words came out thick. "All right. She called those snakes, or maybe it was Stan's anger. She summons the lightning. Clive said she made an antelope climb a tree. She's a witch and has weird powers." Strained pause. "She knows how to make Peakspore." Another pause. "But she's not the one raising hell, she's just reacting.

"Ira Goetz tried to buy Peakspore on one hand, and on the other he's trying to buy Wellesley and her babies. If Wellesley is the only one who can make Peakspore, his two plans are mutually exclusive. So Wellesley didn't make the stuff I burned at the hogan, or Goetz would have taken her then; he saw her. The person who made the compound has to be either Dustin, Stan or Beyer. Goetz knows it came from Winslow, so that means either Stan or Bayer. He saw Stan this morning and didn't arrest him, so Bayer is it." A third pause.

"Goetz is as crazy as Bayer, and just as obsessive. He'll get his rocks off watching Wellesley and me for a while, but then what?" She idled into and out of a wash and crossed a dirt track. "I wish I knew exactly who wants to buy Wellesley and the children, and whether those three are the only people they want."

The plateau lowered and became raddled with streambeds. The junipers thinned. The Little Colorado gorge appeared, a widening red stripe.

"If Bayer was willing to sell Peakspore to use on whole populations, he'd sell his own grandkids. And his grandkids are living with him until Wellesley gets out of the hospital. I'll have to take them. Kidnap them."

She eased to a stop, got out, and walked to the lip of the gorge at Grand Falls. Three hundred feet is a big vertical drop. That was all right, though. She leaned over and spat.

Seventy

"Wanda, would you like to have the business?"

Wanda didn't understand. "What?"

It was five-thirty that evening and they were in the coffee shop. As usual, the shop waited for dinner custom that would not come.

"Would you like to have Jeannie's Typing? I'm leaving Flagstaff."

Wanda still didn't understand. "For good?"

"Yeah."

"How soon?"

"Right away."

The message sank in. Wanda's mouth tightened and her fingers went into her Afro curls to scratch. She studied Naomi, closed down and disapproving. "Is it Sly? Are you going to take her away?"

"If she'll go, but she's a big girl."

"I was going to say. Or it's some kind of trouble you got into."

"No, no trouble."

They sat. Naomi watched her sundae melt and Wanda watched Naomi with that accusing look. Wanda said, "Jeannie, you have a crazy daughter and an asshole for a son-in-law, but they're not enough to drive you out of town. What is it?"

"Nothing's driving me out of town."

"It's not Dustin?"

"No."

"You have good friends here, you own your house, and business is good. Plus, you have memories. Some of those kids you hung out with, back when you were having your mid-life..." Wanda was trying for the light touch, but it wasn't working and she stopped. "So you can't tell me you're going to greener pastures."

Naomi looked at her friend with profound sincerity. "Yes, it's greener pastures."

Wanda shook her head. "You don't have any relatives to get sick, so it's not that." She helped herself to Naomi's cherry. Her face cleared. "It's that Hopi!"

"No."

"Uh-huh!" Naomi didn't move. "You got to watch out for those Hopis, Naomi! They're sneaky with women." She was grinning.

"Can it, Wanda."

Wanda kept her grin. "Excuse me! My sister, Rose? She married a Hopi once. Lasted about three weeks."

"Why?"

"Why'd she marry him?"

"No, why did she divorce him so soon?"

"I don't know. But just as soon as she kicked him out, he was hittin' on me and my other sister at the same time. You got to watch them." She switched her tail against the seat of the booth and rolled her eyes.

Naomi smiled and stirred her coffee. "Fool."

"He pretended to be looking for you this morning, but he just walked over and read your business license. What did he want?"

"Nothing," Naomi said.

"What does he know, then?" Silence. "Sorry; that's none of my business."

Twelve years, Naomi realized with surprise. This woman's been my friend that long and she's never been to my house. "Wanda? Can I tell you my life story? The whole thing?"

Wanda's eyes reddened with gratitude. But she met Naomi’s eyes, smiling, and said, "If you buy me one of those chili rellenos."

Confession, even sotto-voce in a public place, was easier than Naomi could have imagined, and more healing. Wanda would take the business if she could buy it. And, if Naomi would agree, Wanda would give her former boss a sing before she left.

Yes, Naomi would agree. She headed to Winslow to get her grandchildren.

Seventy-one

She took the route across the reservation, down long slopes with juniper and up twisted roads lined with bare sandstone and long vistas, all the way to heaven-scoured Second Mesa, then along eternally sloping and straight Highway 87 dropping to Winslow, a road so clear it is possible to drive 100 miles an hour with impunity.

Colors and sights and smells eluded her until the trip was nearly over. As she approached the viewing stations for the Painted Desert its gray, serrated ugliness brought back the rough feel of the coyote pup's pelt; she couldn't say why. She emerged from a reverie and remembered she was headed for Winslow to get the twins. She called Stan's house from town and was answered by a woman with throaty, slangy speech. It was Corinne.

She found the boys rolling and snorting in a clump of rabbit brush, dirty and alone near the electric gate. Their bunchy diapers were ripped. Their hair was gray with dust. The gutted remains of a jackrabbit lay between them. Disgusted but not especially surprised, she looked around. Bayer’s low house sprawled a hundred yards off along a paved driveway.

Her private prophesies were correct, then; no one watched the children, and they had escaped. She had never seen them free of restraint; they were quiet and utterly content. She caught snatches of their silent talk with her mind. Those tracks in the dirt were made by animals walking on all fours, like the one they caught. The buds on the ends of the twigs were sticky and tasted bad. That thing in the sky would be what The Woman‒Sly, Naomi guessed‒called a bird. Innocent and wondering as their mind-talk was, there was an animal force of intention about it. Given their head, and a couple of months, her grandchildren could successfully compete with coyotes in the wild.

She reached through the driver's-side window and rang the buzzer on the gate. The speaker whistled.

"Yes?" It was Corinne's voice again.

"This is Jeannie Welsh, Clive and Jimmy's grandmother. I've come to pick them up."

"Oh! Right! No one's here now, but the kids are somewhere around." The voice didn't care. "Just a minute; I'll let you in."

The lock snicked. Naomi stayed put, uneasy. "Where's Stan?"

"He's taken his dad to the base for something. I think he didn't want Dr. Bayer to see the boys leave."

Good idea. Naomi drove onto the property. The twins straightened and watched, standing upright, eager to run out to the highway. The gate rolled shut as she got out.

"Come on, boys," she called. "I'll give you a ride to the house!"

She might have been a stranger. They backed off warily, shaking their heads.

"Okay, see if you can beat me there!"

They started running; running well. Careful to let them win, she drove to the house and parked. They jumped and mewed on the broad concrete deck by the front door of the house.

"Right! You're faster than I am! I'll be right back, and we can do it again." She left them outside to wander and perhaps tire themselves; the trip home would not be fun.

Corinne was tall and prettyish in a long red ponytail and jeans, but a little blowsy. Naomi figured that she would be pudgy at thirty and have an awful menopause, if she ever had one. The girl waved toward a bedroom, then, as Naomi hesitated, led the way down a narrow, plastered, tract-house hall.

"I remember now," Corinne said, "You're going to keep them, aren't you?"

Naomi didn't explain about two changes of plan since the day before. "That's right."

"You've got guts."

"I suppose so."

In the nursery, duffels were already packed with the children's things. "Stan thinks you're wonderful to do this," Corinne said.

"I am."

Naomi eyed the wrought-iron partition, bent even more drastically than the one in Sly’s house. Otherwise it was a pretty room, decorated with cartoon cutouts above the quilted wall padding. A frieze of pansies circled the ceiling, Sly's work. Naomi doubted that Stan ever came in here.

"Cute place, huh?" Corinne observed.

Naomi picked up a duffel. "I may need your help to get the boys into the truck."

"Oh, sure. Just a sec till I get the harnesses."

But Corinne was no help at all, because at sight of her the twins hissed like reptiles and backed right off the deck on their hands and knees. Naomi couldn't approach them until Corinne went back indoors. At that, she had to chase them through the scrub and wave meaty sandwiches before she caught them. When she slammed the passenger door on them, their eyes went wide with panic. She hurried to get in and start the engine.

Then Stan and Bayer drove through the gate.

Bayer was out of the truck before it stopped, yelling as he reached toward the gun rack behind the seat. He was a shambling, vacant-eyed mess; he shouldn't have been able to move so fast. Stan reacted, but too late; Bayer had the rifle.

Naomi panicked. "Bitch!" she heard over the howl of her racing engine, "Goddam bitch!"

"Get down, kids!" she screamed, and roared backwards toward the gate. KRRRRAAASH! Bayer was firing at her, had struck something, but her truck kept roaring and careening in reverse, the tires didn't seem to be flat, oh hell oh Christ she was shot, no, something had come through the door, the bullet had glanced off but sent some sort of trash into her thigh. She was whirling off the drive, her tires were spinning and skidding into a half-circle and the two babies were bouncing into the well beneath the dash. There was blood on her pants.

There was another shot, wild. A yell. She glimpsed Stan and Bayer wrestling for the rifle. Then she saw the gate ahead and heard the metallic shriek and crunch on her undercarriage as she roared through it.

She cut onto the road, then the highway like a formula-one pro, cursing and yelling and so hyped on her Peakspore craziness that she forgot her wound and was a couple of miles toward Dustin's, back up Highway 87, when she smelled her own blood. She remembered her grandchildren. She pulled onto the verge and stopped.

"Are you kids all right?" She felt them all over. "Well then, are you bruised?"

The steering column pinged.

"Say it!" she demanded. "I know you can talk if you try."

The steering column pinged again, then the radio came on. She flicked it off. It kept playing.

"Cut it out!"

The radio volume grew and the door locks clicked upward. The passenger door began to swing open. She grabbed Clive, who was nearest the door. Jimmy had been concentrating; as she reached over him he jerked and wailed. Something lifted the front axle; the rear axle; they were floating.

"I said, cut it out!" Naomi gave them the benefit of her biggest glare. The twins bawled and flailed. She pulled the passenger door shut and pushed down on the lock. It was hot. "Calm down or 'l'll strap you in! Jesus!" She reached for a harness.

There was instant quiet. "Bang!" said Clive. He smiled like an angel.

"Crash!" said Jimmy, and smiled too.

Then they curled up on the floor in the passenger well and fell asleep.

She made it to the wide pullout at the Painted Desert Overlook before her nerves caved in. She pulled up quietly and stared unseeing toward the lavender-streaked shoulders which marched toward her hogan. She had been right again; Bayer had planned to sell his grandchildren. Of course he had; otherwise he wouldn't have risked shooting them as she drove away. She checked the sleeping twins and eased out of the truck to call Dustin from the kiosk. He was appalled by her story. He welcomed the children.

They were good all the way to his house, repeating their first words and watching her hopefully to see that she approved of their vocal trick. At first her leg hurt, but it was scabbed over when she pulled up at Dustin's big double doors. Before he could come out, she turned to the watching boys, aware of some flood of feeling, or of willing, from their direction.

"Okay, listen," she told them, and pitched her voice to a reassuring coo as she massaged her tingling leg. "You're going to live with mommy's daddy for a little while, then with me and mommy."

The boys cocked their heads attentively and sat up straight. The truck's springs creaked and the cab settled. The evening light gilding their faces lit against, and bounced off, their unblinking eyes; they seemed to have no pupils.

"Speak to me, Jimmy."

"Bang."

She took a breath. "Things are different from before. You boys don't have to stay apart anymore, or even be indoors, except to eat and sleep. Do you understand me?"

They each nodded, but looked puzzled. Clive edged closer to his brother.

"Clive, do you need the bathroom?" He blushed; the smell of urine filled the cab.

They must learn to trust her; she ignored the smell, except to crack open her window. "Is it easier if I talk in pictures?" she asked. Their fear lessened.

Dustin opened a door to the house, ready to greet them. Naomi waved him off. She made pictures in her head for the boys to see. Glowingly she imagined them freely moving into and out of the big, pointed house. She made pictures of mommy coming to them, her arms outstretched, smiling. Lovingly she saw herself and Sly sharing their grown-up knowledge with them. She made beautiful pictures of endless skies, of long pastures. The boys mewed like animals; they began to cry, and Naomi thought she would go crazy with their longing.

Gradually her imagination became convincing and infectious. Clive moved closer and was finally onto her lap, dozing again. Jimmy's head went against her chest. She stroked them and cried for a while, then took them unprotesting into the house and onto Sly's bed, where the three of them cuddled and the twins slept.

There were silent voices; or no, not voices like her own twins', but audible pictures. The pictures were at peace, but weirdly commanding. Not chaotic, as Naomi had expected; they were paired as confinement and escape, impulse and deliberation, dominance and submission; of subterranean demands not infantile, not adult. Sometimes they seemed to come not from the sleeping boys, but from outside them.

Naomi lay back and blanked her mind further, willing the others, those outside entities, to become plain. It had been years since she felt so contained, so powerful. But she got nothing, unless you counted the lives within the chaparral, the life of the chaparral, the rabbits, snakes, coyotes in which the house was built.

Was that possible? Was there a group mind composed of those animals' lives? Naomi wanted to doubt it, but in view of Sly's experiences with the children she couldn't discount it out of hand.

She would convince Sly that this was best, then talk her into coming to Mexico to be with her children. They were so smart they could learn to cope with life as free animals; people in the bush. Maybe without the conflicts with Stan, maybe if Sly finally realized she wasn't alone in bringing up these two, if Sly got better, got sane enough...

If Sly was beyond help, though, Naomi knew she would recommit her daughter and flee with Clive and Jimmy.

The boys twitched and ground their baby teeth; they were waking, were sensing their new world. She caught an accurate, detailed picture of Grace's kitchen and tasted her three-meat stew.

Seventy-two

Next morning, back at home without the twins, the stench of Sly's snakes against Stan still clung. Naomi forced herself to dress, willed her feet to walk to the truck, and drove toward town without coffee. Halfway in, outrage and fear assailed her with such force it took her breath. She slowed and pulled over. She stopped near the end of the long meadow. "Jesus," she said, and stared through the windshield.

When she reached town she hurried to open the office and almost tripped on student papers that had been passed through the mail slot. She picked them up and rose, dizzy. "Blood pressure," she muttered, and sat quickly. She chuckled. "Wow. What if I’m getting old?"

She went into the coffee shop, intending to keep one eye on the office. The boy with the high-buttoned shirt sat a couple of stools down. He saw her and smiled: there was no escape.

"I've been waiting for you," he said. Naomi nodded and accepted his term paper. "Can you do it by this afternoon at two?" he asked.

She scanned the miserable scrawl, the length of his paper, and shook her head. "Bobby, I'm alone today and I have at least a dozen papers due this morning. I can't."

"You have to! I'll fail Art History if you don't. You just have to!"

"Get another typist."

"They're not as good! I'll pay you double."

"No."

"But you just have to!"

"You said that." She munched some toast.

"I'll fail!"

He was so lugubrious it made her feel better. She went over to him. "Bobby, look at me; raise your chin." Batting off his protesting hands, she unbuttoned the top two buttons of his fancy polo shirt and pulled its tail up on one side.

"Hey! Are you crazy?"

She roughened his hair.

"Hey!"

He stood revealed as a potential man, gender visible, but with everything to learn. She told him, "Kids like you drive me crazy, and that's a fact. Tell you what I'll do. If you cut your nine o'clock class, I'll let you key this on my old word processor while I work. Then I'll edit it on-screen and print it out by one-thirty. No charge." She paused; he was considering it. "You can't comb your hair or button your shirt, though; it's kind of cute. Deal?" He nodded. "Pay the lady, Bob." He nodded again and tried to smooth his hair as he fumbled for change.

It went well. She handled her customers from Wanda's desk, called help to Bobby from across the room, and fended off memories of dead snakes. The phone rang; Bobby looked at her on his way out, wondering whether to answer it. She picked it up.

And recognized the slight, tinny echo on the line. Ira Goetz had tapped her telephone. She called him, got his machine, and dictated a 900-number message filled with explicit, dirty sex.

Seventy-three

Sly was released and the hospital gave cautions for her jittery care. After the initial visit and congratulations, Naomi had two days and a half of quiet. Then Sly barged into the office.

"Come to my house, mom. I have to talk to you."

"Where's your father? I thought he was with you."

"He's at his lawyer's; what's his name. He'll pick me up at four. We have to talk before then."

"I'm sorry, honey, I have to stay here; Dr. Romanov will be in to pay for his wife's dissertation. Let's have lunch."

"Who's Dr. Romanov? Sounds like a Russian."

"They're from Alaska. He owes me three hundred and fifty dollars, and they're leaving for home tonight. I have to stay."

"Let Wanda take the money. I want to talk to you."

"It’ll have to wait, love; Wanda's going home in half an hour."

Sly's eyes swiveled between Wanda and Naomi. "Well, Romanov can mail the money to you."

"Sly, what's so important? Come on; after the work’s done I'll take to you Little America for lunch."

Sly leaned across Naomi's desk and grabbed her mother's purse. "Come on, mother!"

Naomi grabbed for her purse. "No!"

Wanda broke in. "Go ahead, Jeannie. I'll wait 'till you get back."

"No! This is silly." She glared at her daughter. Sly clutched the bag to her chest. "Give me my purse."

"If you come home with me."

"What's so important about this?"

Wanda took charge; "Jeannie, go."

Naomi could have strangled either woman, but logic won. Sly was going to be crazy all day and she'd better take care of her. On the way out she squeezed Wanda's hand, then accepted her purse from Sly. When they reached Sly’s house she parked so that she blocked passage for Sly's jeep.

They went to the back porch and sat in aluminum lounge chairs overlooking the ugly yard. It was muddy brown with pale green at the board fence. Beyond the fence was a housetop ridge and whitish, sun-filled sky that made Naomi squint.

Sly surveyed the neighbor's roofline without noticing it. "Did you tell dad about that fed, mom?"

"No problem, love."

"Why?"

"I learned some things. He's Ira Talayesva Goetz, actually."

"A Jewish Hopi," Sly said.

"Yes."

"Bar Mitzvah'd and everything. In Phoenix."

"How do you know that?"

"We talked. I called his temple." Sly gave a sour smile, still watching the neighbor's roof. "He's Corinne's father. Did you tell dad?"

"Listen, Sly. The FBI wants us and the children. They don't want to kidnap us anymore, but they're offering us money to sell each other out. Or they'll buy us from someone like Agent Goetz."

"I know. I said he's Corinne's father."

"I heard you. Listen. I want you and the children..."

"I'll bet he loves her."

A shudder of suspicion ran up Naomi's spine. "Come with me to..."

"He'd miss her."

Naomi bored on because if she stopped she'd lose whatever control she had left. "Sly, you're talking crazy and I won't put up with it. If you have something to say that makes sense, say it and I won't call the medics. And that's not just a threat. I have things to say too, but only if you're not acting crazy. Then I'm going to leave."

Sly turned to face her, collecting her knees toward her chest and taking a deep breath. She said, "All right, mom." She paused, thinking before she began. "This has all been about Peakspore. I've burned up all the papers about it that there are, and I won't ever tell anyone how to make it. I swear." She bent across the arm of the lounge until their faces nearly touched. "Do you believe me?"

Naomi, more and more surprised, saw right into the girl; read her as easily as she did a customer or a new acquaintance. She saw intensity, but not madness; sincerity; pleading, almost. Sly seemed to be what, for the moment, she was; a bright child-woman with a limited understanding of her enormous problems. And she was frightened of her knowledge of Peakspore; too frightened to recognize that Stan had it, too. Could use it.

"I believe you, Sly."

"Then, listen. I know the Pentagon has some version of the formula, that just makes sense. Beyer might even have duplicated the original recipe when they had him in custody. I want you to keep the children; they trust you. I'm going to let the feds take me."

Naomi half-rose. "No!"

"I mean it; I've signed an agreement. I'm going to get at their lab. I'm going to find out what version of Peakspore they have, and convince them they're on the wrong track so they toss it out. Then I'm going to get rid of whatever other material they have."

"You don't know what you're saying!"

"Yes, I do. They want me as much for my Peakspore formula as for my body, so there's a chance they'll at least pretend to listen to me. And I'll tell them the truth about the effects. I think not even you or dad know all of it; that when more than one Peakspore subject is in a room, the psychic forces, or elements, or whatever, are multiplied; that Clive and I together made just one person, and now Stan and I, with Bayer, are one bigger person. That if you had a squadron of them, of soldiers‒well, remember how it was just before Stan took me away and Clive was killed? Remember how dad's Peakspore animals acted, all together, and following our orders?"

Naomi did. She had never considered this. She had had only hints of the experience. Her mouth went dry.

"Did I tell you I sicced snakes onto Stan?"

"I saw the attack."

"Well, I was only one person, but I was joined with two third-generation little Peakspore subjects when I cast that spell. Understand? I mean the babies. I was with them. Together, we're stronger than anything yet..."

"Little Clive and Jimmy?"

"Right. And once, when big Clive and Stan and I were all on the mesa, know what I did?"

"The tree-climbing antelope. I got a report."

Sly eased back onto her lounge, sighed, stared again at the rooftop beyond the fence. Something, perhaps a force, seemed to have left her. For the first time she seemed normal; she seemed relaxed.

"Want some coffee, mom?"

"Yes." Naomi realized that she was staring. "Lord, yes."

They went into the kitchen and Sly set the machine for capuccino. She was intent on her thoughts. Naomi said nothing. After she handed Naomi a mug and sipped from her own, Sly said, "Pop Beyer can't concentrate for more than two consecutive minutes, so he's worthless to the Pentagon as a chemist. Dad and I are the only people who know what Peakspore is made from, how cold to keep it, for how long, then what to add. And if I'm back there, where the screwing government thinks they can just play with peoples' heads all they want, I'll play right back. And I'll get rid of the stuff. Count on it."

"No you won't, Sly! They'll keep you doped, in a separate part of the country from their laboratories. Their documentation will be encrypted in a third part of the country. You'll be penned like a guinea pig behind bars and fences and security gates. You won't have a chance!"

"Maybe not. But maybe so, if they don't know how to trank me and I wait long enough. And I'll live a looong, long time. I'm going to do it, mom."

Naomi stalked back into the soggy yard, circling, balancing the coffee in her mug and watching the toes of her running shoes. She felt the old animal try to rise like, yes, she realized, like one of Sly's serpents from her belly. She willed it down and stopped pacing.

She said, "Sly, Bayer isn't altogether incapable. Whether you realize it or not, you did inadvertently gave him back the formula. That's where the Peakspore at the hogan came from, from Bayer. He was selling it to someone. And then when he found out I burned it, he got mad and trashed the hogan. That's what really happened. I think he left it for Goetz, because Goetz is the one who told me the hogan was trashed.

"Anyhow, what I'm trying to say is, giving yourself to the Pentagon won't do any good because Bayer has the formula, too. And if you're gone and the children are with me, what'll happen? I'm a Peakspore subject. Not as, as powerful as you are, and my symptoms seem to be leaving, but I’m a subject. Do you want that?" Sly recognized the implication. She turned away, frustrated. Naomi said, "Come with me. Bring the kids. We'll go somewhere safe. Isolated. Mexico, where the four of us can't raise as much hell."

"No. Mom, haven’t you’d been listening? The four of us together? What a mind that would be! What willpower! And they'd find us. Even if Pop Bayer sells the formula, the government wants me, and I can get to it when I give myself up. Mom, I know what that stuff can do. I don't think it's responsible for all my craziness, but when I'm alone I'm always afraid of being like the sheep, following whatever catches my eye and looking for a leader.

"I know I'm smart, yeah. I know I don't get sick like other people. But‒I never told you, did I? Only dad. Whenever I'm with regular people I have to overreact in order to make up my own mind. Clive, too. I'm psychic, sure; lots of people are, and Peakspore aggravates that. And it gave us these powers over animals and things." She was becoming excited again; her chest heaved.

"But Clive and I had to strain not to do what other people unconsciously wanted us to. And people want violence. Vengeance. They covet things. And Peakspore‒God, I hate it and everyone involved with it!‒Peakspore made willing patsies out of us. That's why I have to get that stuff. Because Peakspore turns people into manipulable robots."

"Sly, your father and I will do everything we can to prevent you doing this. You know that."

Sly glared. "It won't be enough, mom."

Naomi was becoming excited, too. Again she fought the interior animal as it grew; she sat on the lounge, stood up, set down her mug, remembered to breathe through her nose. "It was enough before," she said. "Damn it, Sly, get real! You can't take on the Pentagon! Who do you think you are, Wonder Woman? You just said it's an effort not to act on other peoples' violence, and the men who run the Pentagon are killers by trade! They think in terms of overkill! Expendable populations!"

And Sly's animal took over, feeding from her mother's. She came up to her mother swift and feral. "Why did I let you live?"

Naomi froze. "Clive’s death!" she hissed back. "You mean you killed him! Murdered him!"

Sly wasn't listening. Circling her mother, stomping the soft ground, she ranted, "You. Dad. Did you care? Did you come for me when I was kidnapped? Not until Clive called you. Stan took me from my father's home. He pumped me, cajoled and flattered me, made love to me, just so I would be crazy enough to make that stupid chemical for his stupid sheep! What did you do? You came over and stole it! Buried it somewhere! I gave up college for him! My brother died because of him! I could be somebody in the tribe, if you had helped me! I could have worked with dad in his lab!"

Everything Naomi saw was red. Her remaining sanity shrieked, "She's my daughter!" And with equal force her yammering gut demanded, "Kill!" But she could not, she must not rise and strike.

Finally, and perhaps it was inevitable, she stopped loving. She wouldn't abandon her daughter, the girl had no one else. But love was gone.

"Are you through?" she asked.

"No."

Sly's eyes went expressionless. And she delivered a long, enlightening rant that after half an hour, when Dustin arrived, was still gathering force. Between them they got enough pills into the girl to put her to sleep.

Seventy-four

Dustin went home with Naomi. They stood in the wood porch, too sad to move.

"She's scary," Dustin said.

"Scarier," Naomi amended. "She thinks she knows what she's doing."

She thought of all the years of special attention; education, therapy, nutrition, all the effort it took to bring Sly to this inadequate point. She felt a world of regret. And, without some overt act on Sly's part, powerless to help. Some overt act: it was a matter of time.

"It's getting cold," she said. "Will you have some stew with me?"

"Yes."

He opened the door to the living room and she swayed as she entered, brushing his chest with her shoulder.

"When does Grace expect you back?"

"When I get there."

She led the way to the kitchen. As she pulled the stew from the freezer, he reached for the adjacent cupboard door and they brushed again.

"Oops."

"Sorry."

"My fault."

They smiled awkwardly. Naomi set the pot onto the stove. "Shall I make some biscuits?"

"All right."

She turned on the oven and reached for the cupboard. Banged Dustin's head with the door as he set the plates.

"Oh! Sorry!"

He rubbed his head. "It's all right."

"The butter's in the fridge."

"No, it's on the table."

"Oh."

"Shall we have wine?"

"Why not?"

They reached for the glasses at the same time and pulled back before the collision. Dustin smiled. "You go put on some Haydn, all right Naomi? It'll be safer."

"I guess I've lost it. Sorry."

"We lost a lot this afternoon."

"Yes."

"A lot more," he amended. "She'll never change. I don't think I can play that game again, either. Fatherhood. Grandfatherhood. Rescuer."

Naomi was at the doorway. "There's no law requiring self-immolation, Dustin. We loved the twins. We had that."

He stood irresolute between the table and the countertop, taking in her acceptance and forgiveness. "Naomi?"

That's all it took. Her head against his chest, her eyes closed, she breathed in his smell and was back where she belonged.

"I don't think I want stew anymore," she said.

He scooped her up and made her dizzy as he carried her to her bed.

It occurred to her that the metal springs would squawk. It occurred to her that light from the living room would play over his naked shoulders and reveal his beloved face in passion. She worried that the bedroom window was open and, naked, he might get cold.

But she couldn't have imagined how it would feel to be undressed so tenderly. Or how his lips would be, brushing across her shoulder and down her breast, his long hair trailing along her cheek. And certainly in her wildest fantasies she could not have anticipated the joy she felt when he finally cried out, and with her name.

Later.

He was propped on his elbow, tracing figures across her chest. "I don't want to leave you."

She chuckled and snaked an arm around his neck. "Then you might as well stay all night."

"I don't mean that."

"Oh." Naomi caught at his finger to still it. His eyes. His eyes. "Dustin, I'm serious; I can't bring myself to do any more for Sly or her children."

He said, "I can't lose you again."

There was too much to say, so Naomi kissed him.

Seventy-five

Banging on the screen door echoed through the house. Naomi woke slowly. Dustin was into his jeans, pulling on a work shirt, fuddled and irritated. "Who comes around your place this early?"

"No one. There must be something up."

The sun was rising, its snow-whitened light filtered into wisps by lace curtains. Naomi was naked, the air was chill, the bed was warm from Dustin's body. She said, "I'll stay here a minute," and ground her face into his smell on the pillow.

His footsteps padded to the living room. The front door squeaked open, then the screen door on the porch. Men's voices entered the house. Dustin reappeared and sat on the bed to get his boots. He was grim. "You'd better get up. It's the police."

She stiffened. "Which police?"

"Sheriffs. Just get up." He left.

Still muzzy-headed, she dithered between silk slacks and jeans. High mucky-muck, she heard in her head. It was the interior voice of a stranger, a policeman; he had recognized Dustin. She dragged on jeans and headed for the living room.

The men weren't talking. A pair of deputies, young and old, stood on the porch before the open door. The young one held a notebook. Dustin watched them with the wariness he used for a strange dog. "Jeannie, this is Deputy Rogers and Deputy Williams."

Mistress.

Her alarm was triggering an old response. Naomi nodded toward the men and moved to the fireplace for a better look, her senses straining to taste the air. Rogers, with the notebook, began, "A woman is dead, ma'am. We'd like to ask you some questions."

"Yes?"

"Do you know the whereabouts of your daughter? Mrs. Stanley Mitchell?"

Ice sank into her belly like a stone. "Wellesley? No."

He jotted. "When did you last see her, Ms. Walsh?"

"Yesterday."

"Was she alone?"

"Yes."

Dustin interrupted, "I'm Wellesley's father. Ms. Walsh and I were there together."

"What sort of car does she use, Ms. Walsh?"

"A Jeep. 1982."

"Do you have that license number?"

"No." Silent pause. No bird song, no sough of wind. "What is this?"

Dustin turned from the men. "Corinne is dead."

Dashes of light from man to man: screeches from the void: stench.

"And Goetz?"

Rogers answered. "Agent Goetz, the victim's father, told us your daughter and his, the deceased, didn't get along, and that she, uh, Wellesley Mitchell, made threats against Corinne, er, Goetz. The deceased. We need to ask your daughter some questions."

"So Ira knows?"

"Next of kin has been notified, yes," the deputy said.

The older deputy, Williams, took a step apart and peered toward the hall but didn't enter the room. Weird place...

She asked Dustin, "How?"

"Garroted. With wire. At the ranch. Stan found her body."

The room swam.

"Here! Maybe some water..." It was Rogers.

She eased onto a wing chair. "Where would she have gone?"

"Home, probably," Dustin said. "The mesa." He dropped her hand. "I'll call." He dialed and waited. The deputies shifted on their feet, impatient but remembering protocol. Yes, Sly would head for Dustin's. And so would Goetz. But first, the Peakspore at the ranch...

Dustin dialed another number.

"Dustin? He'll be up there too."

"Who?"

"Ira. Goetz. Sean. Telly."

The name connected at last. "Why?" he asked.

"To finish his plan. Hang up; your men are too busy to answer. Call the tribal police."

He dialed.

Naomi lowered her face into her hands, thinking hard, shutting out the eerie voices and the penetrating smell of fur. Yes; Sean-hyphen-Ira would avenge his daughter by slaughtering them all. He would present the Pentagon with ashes of Peakspore and the corpses of its subjects. Looking up she said, "Deputy Rogers, Corinne Goetz's fiancée and his father have probably been kidnapped. His father is famous..."

"We know Dr. Bayer, ma'am," Deputy Williams said.

"Will you get onto the radio to confirm tgat they are all right?"

"Ma'am, the victim resided in another county. We have no jurisdiction, and communication..."

She was suddenly onto her feet and ranting. "Do it! If you can't use your brain, use your goddam radio! Lives are at stake!"

Mild Deputy Rogers said, "The lady is intimate with the situation, Williams. Can't hurt," and Williams sauntered down the steps to their car. Rogers waggled a paper. "Sorry, Ms. Walsh, we have to search your home."

Dustin looked up from the phone. "Is that a warrant?"

"It's all right, Dustin."

"Yes, sir, it is."

"Dustin, it's all right! Go ahead and look, Deputy Rogers."

"I'll wait for my partner, ma'am." He crossed his arms, uncrossed them, turned and looked through the screen of the porch. Williams, at the car, raised and lowered a mike as he spoke or listened. "It's regulation," Rogers said.

Dustin spoke into the telephone, using Navajo. Williams joined Rogers in the wood porch. He nodded confirmation to Naomi. Naomi couldn't follow what Dustin said, but caught the words for plane and police. "Search," she told the deputies. "Mr. Begay and I will stay in this room, if that will help."

"That's not necessary," Williams said. "Deputy Rogers and I have been called back to the station."

"Is Dr. Bayer safe?"

"...You were correct, ma'am."

Dustin banged the phone into the cradle. "What?"

Williams shuffled his feet to augment his admission. "Agent Goetz arrived at the Mitchell ranch while the Navajo County Coroner was concluding his work there. Agent Goetz arrested the doctor and his son and now has them in custody."

"Where?"

"However, he did so without warrant and, when questioned, would declare no grounds. When challenged, he sabotaged the sheriff's vehicles, set fire to an outbuilding, and fled. With the two men. He is being pursued."

"Christ!" Dustin took a step, stopped and spun again to the deputy. "Was he driving, or flying?"

"The chief didn't say."

"You'd best hope he was driving. Grab whatever you need, Naomi. The tribal plane is on its way."

Seventy-six

It was a tiny airplane piloted by a man Dustin introduced as Warren. Dustin and Naomi crouched on a bench and listened to the clink of wrenches and screw drivers that scraped across the floor whenever the plane banked. Cold seeped in at the windows. The plateau was pocked by bunch grass and the soil was warmed by wakening roots. Toward Winslow, black chimney smoke was pressed into the pattern of old, shallow streambeds by the heavy cold air.

Naomi couldn't act and she was too hyper to think, so she talked.

"God, Dustin. Will she follow the whole plot? The Medea? Do you think that's what she's doing? Maybe I'm wrong. Did I tell you about Stan and the snakes? Yeah? That's the awfullest coincidence, her witchcraft. She says she killed Clive. I think she and Stan were just in a frenzy, surrounded by all the Peakspore animals and feeding on their hysteria. And I guess it was exciting, too, running away from their mom and dad, don't you? But the plot continues in sequence, Dustin. Tom Mitchell died and so Stan inherited the ranch the way Jason inherited his kingdom from his uncle. Then Bayer recovered from catatonia, like the old man in the story. And Sly was right in there with her chants and spells, taking credit for it."

Dustin took her hand. "But what was the result? Where was her reward? Naomi, this isn't fate or a legend. It is Stan's simple-witted plot to get rich, and it backfired. Listen. Stan stole Thunder, and Thunder's fleece was gold-colored, yes; that's right. But kidnapping Sly was just the act of a melodramatic adolescent stealing what he wanted."

Naomi was firm. "But then she had two children like Medea, and Stan began seeing Corinne, and now Corinne is dead. Sly's following the script. Remember how the Medea ends?"

"Hush! Coincidences!"

"So many? She wants it! She's been working up to it."

Warren, a short-coupled man with a round, pocked face, said, "Sounds like a story about the Stricken Twins, chief."

"Wrong, Warren. But we'll consider it."

Seventy-seven

The plane flew over the mesa, then The Arm, and spiraled onto the drive before the house. There were faint pop-pops, and the fuselage pinged and whanged with the first of many bullets as Naomi, Dustin and Warren ducked and blasphemed their way into the house‒"God!" "Christ!" "Jesus!"‒and stood momentarily at the dawn-bright front windows yelling over each other’s voices.

"What in hell is this shit?"

"I saw the Jeep by the pens when we flew over."

"I mean, it! What's going on?"

"Mother?"

The cold house was dim. Grace emerged from the kitchen and stopped under the dark of the landing, round, grey-faced and so frightened her voice fluttered. "She's gone crazy. She just ran out there with a rifle. You can see it all from the kitchen."

Naomi dashed past. Grace continued, "That white boy came with some other men, one looks like an Indian."

"Mother, I'm sorry..."

"It's not your fault, son. That punky white bunch... Naomi, you come help me with the babies; they're probably scared." She shuffled toward the guest wing, still talking. "She was normal until those men showed up. I think she would of been all right. But she saw them and she took the kids in her room and came out wearing that trashy leather outfit..."

Warren was mad. "Anybody going to explain this shit?"

Dustin was already thumbing the mike of a walkie-talkie at his desk. He explained, "The bad guys are having a war and the posse's late in coming." He tossed a ring full of keys. "Go upstairs and help yourself to a weapon. The cabinet's by the bathroom door. Bring me the shotgun. My hired men will help."

"How many men do you have?"

"Eight."

Warren's face cleared. "Alright, then."

At the window in the kitchen door Naomi could see much of the compound. Goetz's truck was head-to-head with Sly's Jeep. Their bumpers were locked, like horns. Beyond them was the long bunkhouse roof; lab wall; pen corners; at Kaibito Wash, a fast-rising, impossible thunderhead.

Even from a distance she felt the pull of Peakspore's violence. She heard a rifle shot, answers from an automatic pistol, and then a shotgun blast. The house muted the noises, but that only made them more threatening. Sly's leather cape flirted from the girl's back as she dashed behind the lab. Another boom. Upstairs, glass tinkled. Dustin yelled: "Don't answer! It'll draw their fire!" Warren's response was muffled.

Naomi turned away, wrapped herself with her arms and fought the increasing psychic pull from the yard. More shots. Dustin and Warren came in, brandishing weapons.

"The men are all right. They have Bayer..."

"Beyer escaped?" Naomi asked. "Where's Goetz?"

"He and Stan..."

"Dustin!" Grace's voice held a world of grief. They found her at Sly's open bedroom door. Holding the jamb she sank and sank, lowered her head onto her hands and sank further until she knelt on the floor.

I don't want to go in there. I don't ever want to go into that room! Naomi thought, did she; Dustin's grip pulled her.

The twins lay unmarked, a head on each pillow, their small hands crossed over their chests. Right in the center of each forehead was a shiny spot; an anointing with oil, a witch's blessing. Their faces were as innocent as sleeping seraphim.

Dustin paused. "She smothered them."

"She murdered them," Grace wailed.

"She put them down," Naomi corrected.

She began to run. Dustin shouted and followed, and Warren, but they could not keep pace with her horrible grief.

Seventy-eight

"...rotteness of the mind that moves the gibbering mouth. By Marchosias's lightning wrath you are to die..."

Naomi ran Stan popped into view from the dock. He fired at Sly and received a hail of squirming reptiles. Lightning danced along the palings which surrounded Dustin's stockyard. There was no army of boys, but the danger now was greater: the land's creatures rose. Hissing and biting at the stampeding animals or at one another, they carpeted the ground. As their power joined Naomi’s she felt it and rejoiced. She knew herself huge, powerful and stupendously triumphant as if finally and truly given birth.

She circled the bunkhouse, still running. The lightning lit everything from black, boiling clouds. Sly strobed into view again, her arms raised and her hair flying.

Peakspore was here. Naomi didn't smell or taste it, she sensed it with a certainty that grew as she ran. It would evaporate into the wind across the mesa covered with questing, mating animal life. It would tumble into The Arm and the Colorado River. It would poison the drinking and irrigation water of America's southwest, then stain the whole world with madness and make all things conflict and kill. It nudged her. It urged her to join. It demanded her. She let it in.

Demented and focused, she forced a path through animals. She emerged onto the frozen seep of Kaibito Wash, moving gingerly on the ice and keeping an eye on that black cloud. She followed her sense for the poison until she was behind the shed at the dock.

Dustin and the others were invisible and insignificant. Stan was visible, but he meant nothing. She knew only her panting breath. She saw only the high wall of the wooden shed and smelled the poison inside of it. Some black substance oozed down the wall toward the ice.

She needed fire. She had to have fire now, fire to ignite that oozing oil and kill the effects of Peakspore. She demanded that there be fire. Power rose from her bowels and reached her throat and lifted her arms. "COME!" she shrieked.

It came. Lightning hit the peak of the shed. There was a roar more deafening than all the others. The earth shuddered, the ice under Naomi's boots split, and the shed exploded as she fell into the shallows. Debris whipped the sky with blazing splinters. She rose and ran the way she had come. She rounded a building and nearly emerged into the alley formed by the laboratory.

Nearly.

Goetz, yellow-eyed, stinking of snakes and adrenaline, landed squarely on her shoulders from the roof and was beating at her with something hard; a pistol.

Mistake.

She went to her hands and knees, bucked, and whipped to her feet. He thrashed to the ground against a wall, spraying bullets into a wavefront of bullsnakes, rattlers, red racers, lizards. She whirled again. The first gigantic sow screamed its way out of its pen, leaping over the remains of the solid, high fence. She felt her own cry, the grating, satisfying howl. She stomped Goetz's arm before he could react, stomped again on the pistol grip. Felt the bone crunch and the faint protest from the far rictus of his mouth. She kicked it. He fainted.

Coyote appeared. This time He was plural, a yipping pack that swirled into the crush of stampeding super-sheep, super-swine and super-cattle.

"KILL!" Naomi called.

The first tornado struck from the cloud and lifted dirt and shattered boards. Another joined it from The Arm and raised shards of ice with its sinuous dance. Coyotes rode on backs. They tore at animal shoulders and hung from furred throats. With an immense, sky-ripping thunderclap the air turned green. Coyote multiplied.

Sly, her arms raised and her cape floating, her loose hair flying in the eerie storm, appeared and disappeared with the light and quoted more curses from Anton LaVey:

"May the resistless power of my voice and annihilating power of my wrath smash the stillness of the air..."

Naomi stomped Goetz again and felt another bone break, this one in his chest. "Sly!" she called. The girl turned, still chanting. Under the heavy, flying cape she was naked.

"... and bring the hellish fires of wrath upon a plain of writhing serpents! I am become a monstrous machine of annihilation to the festering fragments of the body of him who would... "

The air was alive with thunderous disaster. Every living thing effloresced and broadcast pulses of light. Peakspore roared its maniac imperative within each skull. Goetz rose with unyielding power even as Naomi tried to grind his chest further into the dirt. He rose as unfazed and as expressionless as Golum, freeing his shapeless hand and arm, concentrating, watching them mend, a mind-bending healing so rapid that his fingers flexed and stretched in perfect shape and tone to form a fist.

Hate was faster. Naomi butted as he watched. She jammed her fist into his neck and sent his head against the cinderblock wall. She butted into his mouth and didn't feel his teeth when they broke out. She ripped his ears backward to butt his exposed throat again; gripped his shirt when he sagged and banged his head repeatedly against the cinderblock, then the wire-reinforced glass of the shattering window. She heard his skull crack. It opened. He went limp.

She caught his brand-new hand and dragged him, herself a shambling beast.

Bayer's face appeared and disappeared in a little window, but she didn't react. His hands grasped the ledge. Dustin stood at the end of the building, aiming his shotgun where there was no target, shedding heat like a Berserker and dead-serious about murder. Warren was curled against the wall with his arms shielding his head. Naomi picked up his .45 as she passed. At the corner she adjusted her grip on Goetz's hand and looked back. Bayer had emerged from the window. She circled the lab.

"Sly, come!" she demanded. She raised Goetz like a piece of dangled bait. "Come!"

"...It repenteth me not that my summons‒doth ride upon the blasting‒winds which multiply the‒sting of my bitterness. I call upon the‒messsengers of‒doom to slassh with‒grimm‒deliiight‒this‒viictiiim‒I‒have‒chosennn..."

The words slowed and ran down until they lost meaning. Winds struck and whirled. Lightning danced from building to fence to feed trough. Animals yipped or neighed or shrieked and died. The hairs on Naomi's arms prickled, each crowned with a tiny, thorny light.

"Your thymus gland..." she called. Then she stumbled on, dragging Goetz's remains.

Seventy-nine

Scrub brush scraped Naomi's jeans. Her chest heaved with effort. And as exhaustion finally came near, some of her sanity returned.

She reached the rise over The Arm. She turned to look down at Dustin's compound. The figures were tiny. Sly's black hair snaked over her shoulders and around her throat. Even in dying, her automatic chant continued, meaningless now, and slow.

Dustin, unarmed, careened toward Stan as Warren grabbed a rifle and aimed. Stan swiveled and aimed back at him. And Beyer did a crazy, loving thing: he ran, stumbling and vague, to save his son. His little knees pumped high, his head reared back so that his short hair flew. He tipped Dustin neatly onto The Arm as Warren fired.

Naomi, still pulling Goetz, stumbled on.

She turned again. Bayer knelt and cradled his fallen son. Warren ran for the dock. Dustin emerged from the icy water. Bayer received Warren's second shot and slumped. Stan writhed against his father, screaming high like a bird.

A sedan with insignia on its door pulled into the compound.

Naomi's magical strength was gone. She cast Goetz over the cliff and felt nothing as his corpse bounded into the water.

Then she was at the cottonwood again, between the boles, and squeezing their bark and watching from above, nearly sane. She was keening, her chin up and her throat convulsed with fury that it was all, love and motherhood, and life without them, such a waste. But this time there was a name to call and she called it: "Dustin!"

Dustin and Warren had Sly into the center of the compound, holding her erect. The girl slipped from their arms and lay still on the ground.

The air pulsed and roared. A helicopter skimmed the rise beyond the circled stones, rounded the house, and landed. Naomi saw the dragons as it passed overhead; a caduceus was stenciled on its belly, two red dragons winding round a staff. Dustin and Warren dragged Sly under its rotors. Its door opened. Chrome instruments in its bowels glittered and struck spears of light into Naomi's eyes.

"DUSTIN!"

Smoke rose over The Arm like a black-stemmed flower. Finally it thinned, and two charred figures lay among the flaming timbers of the dock: Beyer and Stan. Small fires stood on each of the remaining uprights of the shed. Dustin and Warren watched the helicopter leave. Grace appeared from the kitchen door of the house.

Eighty

The horizon was always higher than Naomi's eye-level. There didn't seem to be much to do, so she sat on one of Sly's rocks: sandstone, gritty and soft, a rounded thing on which to put her rump. Like the first time she saw Dustin on the reservation, she remembered.

She waited for him to show up. A whiney, self-involved wind pestered her ears like a mosquito. Grit stung its way down her shirt. Across The Arm, junipers whipped their tops back and forth, back and forth until she became bored by the same trick performed over and over. A jackrabbit appeared at its burrow and, facing the wind, tried to learn whether it were safe to leave. It couldn't tell she was animate, so she picked up a rock and tossed it. The rabbit swiveled its ears at the sound but ignored her. Just to show it, she stood up and roared, a puny roar compared to the whine of the wind over The Beautiful Land. The rabbit started and dove for its hole.

She sat back down. The sky was like iced turquoise. It turned green in the east, where it leveled and met occasional mesas like standing women. But mostly it fell behind level blue-gray stuff she had to tell herself was the real world, surrounding her like a fretful-making fence. She wished she had a beer. Or she wished she had the crazy man who said he was an Indian but was rich on super-sheep and ate posole for breakfast. He would come; he had to. If he didn't, she wished for an end to all the craziness for good and all, and to go back to some huge city where noise would hammer your ears until you forgot how lonesome things could be if you didn't watch out. The land bulged and whined; they call it a desert.

Dustin came. He walked with a lope and carried some sort of short-barreled weapon in his right hand. It pointed toward the ground about twelve feet ahead of him all the time. His arms raised when he crossed a rocky spot to balance himself, but the gun still pointed about twelve feet ahead. She wondered how he did that.

He sat beside her on the rock.

"Are the police gone?" she asked.

"Yes."

He settled to looking at The Arm. Then he looked nearer, around them. Then at her. "Did you know that's a sacred mountain over there?"

"Yes." She looked at Tazzi Skizzi and wondered how big it was and whether the Anasazi used to worship it as well as the Navajos. "I saw a jackrabbit a while ago," she told him. "It was big."

"Any coyotes?"

"Yours. I can't smell them."

He set his shotgun beside him on the rock. They sat and watched the land for sign of people until the sun was disappearing and the wind's whine began to drop. Now it would get cold. She stood up; her legs were stiff and her back hurt. Dustin reached up for her hand. "Help me up."

She was pulled off-balance by his weight. "You're heavy," she said.

"You're strong enough."

That's when Dustin's coyotes came back. They frisked before them all the way to the house, then disappeared.

End

Margaret Raymond is a journalist and broadcaster who spent several years

in the Five Tribes area of Arizona. She lives in northern California.

Visit her website at margaretraymond.com

Read her blog at margaretraymond.blogspot.com

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mail to: margaretrmnd@gmail.com