I continued my preparations for breaking into Amorise's house, but my anger had cooled somewhat, and by mid-afternoon another passion had taken its place. Everywhere I aimed my thought I met with the image of Joan Gwynne and the ghost of Martha Laurens. I saw Joan's long legs, those amazing eyes, the lush curvature of her lips. I tried to suppress these yearnings, but they surrounded me like perfume, and finally I called her office again, intending to threaten the secretary. But this time she put me through without hesitation. Joan was sitting at her desk, dressed in a dark blue business suit. She smiled on seeing me, but it was a troubled smile.

"I was going to call you," she said.

"After the way I broke up with you … and then last night, I don't know why you would," I said. "I was rude. I …"

"I understand. It's all so new … so strange."

"Can we meet somewhere? I want to make it up to you."

Her expression grew more distressed. "I don't know."

"Dinner," I said. "We can go anywhere you like."

She put her head down a second. "I have …" She sighed, as if arriving at a decision, and glanced up at me. "I'm involved with someone, David. I don't know what to do about it. I want to see you, but I'm not sure what's right here."

"Are we not involved?" I asked, recalling what I had heard about her lesbian lover.

"So it would seem. But I …" She shook her head, signifying her bewilderment. "You have to give me time to sort things out."

"How long?"

"A day or two. I'll call you."

Try as I might, I could not sway her. I ended the call and paced about the apartment, feeling like a fool for being so besotted by a woman with whom I'd had only fleeting intimacy in the present, no matter how deep our relationship in the past. But I no longer wanted to deny the connection, and I decided to send her flowers. As it was late in the afternoon, I thought I would send them to her home. If it aroused the suspicions of her lover, then so much the better. Once again I called the office and asked the secretary for her address. At first she refused to provide it, but when I told her my purpose she relented. She read it to me, and I did not have to write it down. The address was on Vashon Island.

Joan lived with Amorise.

I was, for several seconds, absolutely blank, and the thoughts and feelings that rushed in to fill the blankness, though framed by an overarching anger, were touched with admiration at the neatness of the web in which I had become stuck. Every strand led to Amorise, and I realized she was inviting me to come to her. She had contrived her design so that everything I wanted was under her control.

Close upon this recognition came a powerful sense of loss and a comprehension that—although I had walked away from Joan the night before, and no matter the source of the attraction—those feelings were as sharp in me as the touch of fire. I could not, for several minutes, compose myself, realizing that Amorise had placed Joan beyond my grasp. This recognition overwhelmed any logic that might deny or ameliorate its truth. My brain had turned to iron, penetrated by a single white-hot thought that had no voice or means of expression … at least not at first. For as I sat at my desk, unable to move or even to contemplate movement, words came to me, almost without any awareness on my part, and I found myself scribbling on the sides of a circuit diagram:

The black dog who carries my heart in its jaws
Firmly so as not to drop it into puddles or pissholes
Having been marked by God for this special task
To remind me that Love is such a caring beast.…

I began to study the plans of the security system I had designed for her. It was likely that she had made modifications, but I doubted she would have had time to install an entirely new system. Once inside I could lock the house and prevent her from escaping, but she would then retreat into the panic room and call the police. Of course I could cut her lines, jam her outside communications, and I could override her alarms and counterfeit an all-is-well signal to the private cops that patrolled the neighborhood. That would leave us in a stalemate—Amorise in the panic room and me standing by the door. But a stalemate might be all that was required. My actions might convince her that I would not do her bidding … not this time around. Afterward I could take a short vacation, or a long one, and let Wooten handle the fallout. One way or another, though, I intended to make a statement with Amorise.

I had made my entrance into a smallish game room, but the living room beyond was as big as the lobby of a grand hotel, with a marble fireplace, five groupings of chairs and sofas ranging its more than one-hundred-foot length. The air was scented by a half-burned cedar log in the hearth, and the area was filled with security devices, all coded so as to prevent remote disabling, each keyed to ignore those people whom its detectors registered as familiar. I moved into the room and a cleaning robot—a flat black shape capable of prospecting for dust beneath the furniture—came trundling across the carpet toward me, spitting blue tongues of electricity. I jumped aside and immobilized it with a freon spray. As I went forward, I was attacked by a lamp cord of so-called "intelligent plastic" that tried to garrote me, whipping up into the air like a flying snake. I immobilized it as well. Most of the security devices in the room were centered about a vault set in the left-hand wall—I gave it a wide berth and continued on cautiously, a scanner in one hand, laser torch in the other, searching for any potential threat. I managed to negotiate the room without further incident, but as I stepped out into the main entryway, at the foot of a curving marble staircase, one of the larger cleaning units, a domed white shape the size of a wastebasket hurtled at me, visible in the moonlight spilling through the windows flanking the front door. I eluded its rush, and as it turned back toward me, I swung the laser torch over the top of the dome, where the control package was housed, burning a seam along the right quadrant. It kept coming. I held the torch steady, burning smoking lines across the entirety of the machine, but in the instant I disabled it, it succeeded in brushing against my leg, transmitting a shock that threw me onto my back and left me stunned. I lay for a moment, gathering myself. Apparently Amorise had been able to make more significant changes than I had believed possible. I wondered why I wasn't dead—the unit I had just disabled carried a lethal voltage. Then I had a revelation: Amorise must have reduced the charge. She could not afford to kill me. Not, at any rate, until I produced the Text. I felt suddenly foolish. What was I doing here? I could thwart Amorise's intentions simply by leaving town. It was only my anger—Villon's anger, I thought—that had brought me to the house.

I struggled to my feet, still woozy, and started for the front door. But every step I took caused a resurgence of anger, and my desire to harm Amorise was reinvigorated. I stood for a moment, revising my plans. If she had not been roused by the incident with the cleaning unit, and I presumed this to be the case, for I had given no outcry, then I might be able to get to her before she succeeded in locking herself in the panic room. I was not certain what I would do to her if I were able to head her off, but I was willing to let that decision await the moment. But if she had locked herself away, well, the panic room was on the second floor, and I remembered now that I had suggested to McQuiddy that I install a reinforced framework to support the room; he had rejected the idea due to budgetary concerns. It might be possible to set a fire that would eat away the supports beneath it, and the steel box with Amorise inside would come hurtling down—at the very least she would be injured.

I was about to head upstairs to find Amorise's bedroom when from the various rooms and corridors that opened off the entryway there poured an army of household appliances and robots. More than a hundred, by my estimation. I darted back toward the living room, but that avenue of escape was blocked by a green gardening robot, headless yet taller than a man, armed with several pairs of snapping foot-long shears. Chittering and beeping, the machines formed into a semi-circle, forcing me back against the front door. The sight was both frightening and absurd. At their forefront was a twelve-slice toaster that I had made mobile by the addition of six black humanoid feet. It was a conversation piece, a status item intended to evoke laughter. But now, waddling about and lashing its non-functional plug like a maddened tail, the general of a force composed of various cleaners and scrubbers, centipedelike air purifiers, and saucer-sized spiderlike ceiling sweeps, there was little humorous about it. I'd been prepared to deal with the machines individually—en masse they presented a problem. I fumbled out my scrambler and punched in an emergency override. The gardening robot became inactive, but the rest remained jittering, trembling, leaking a high-pitched electronic babble, the moonlight polishing their sleek surfaces.

Deciding that I had a better chance on the move than standing my ground, I leaped over half the force, landing amidst a cluster of sweeps. Several of them clung to my leg as I jumped again, clearing the edge of the marshaled machines, and ran full tilt along a darkened corridor. I managed to scrape the sweeps off my leg, crushing one of them against the wall—I could hear the rest of the machines beeping and squeaking behind me. I pushed through swinging doors into the kitchen, a large cluttered space bright with moonlight. Something rushed at my ankles—I kicked at it and it let out a yelp. It was only a dog, and a smallish one at that. I heard it whimper, its paws clittering on the linoleum as it slunk away. The next instant something bit into my shoulder and buried itself into the wall beside me. An electric knife. It tried to wrench itself free, but I grabbed the hilt and broke off the blade. Blood was trickling down my arm from the point of my shoulder. I wrangled a refrigerator in front of the door, blocking it, and stood for a second, breathing hard. Slants of bone-white light, alternated by zones of deep shadow, fell across the center island and hanging copperware, an enormous range, and a counter lined with bins and appliances. The kitchen was a dangerous place, but I liked my chances there better than out in the corridor. I crawled up on top of the center island just in time to avoid a buzzing object that thudded into the base of the island. I was safe for the moment, but I knew I could not stay there long and I decided to try for the pantry, which opened onto another corridor—this led, after a turn or two, back to the entryway. I walked cautiously across the top of the island, torching a food processor that had been lurking behind a colander, pretending to be an ordinary appliance—half its circuits fused, it lunged forward on stilt-like legs in a futile attempt to maim me, then fell on its side. I stopped with a foot in the air, remembering the microwave, in front of which I was just about to pass. I eased back a step, stood one-footed and removed a shoe. I took a couple of warm-ups and then slung the shoe at the door of the oven. A beam of ruby light speared it, causing it to burst into flame. I skipped to the other end of the island before the oven's laser could reset. I sat on the edge of the island, holding the laser torch at the ready, and stretched my foot down. A toy truck rolled out of the shadows and tried to impale my foot with the electrified spike extruded from its grille—I hit it with a swing of the torch and it expired with a tinny rattle.

The pantry door, a flat white rectangle with a recessed square, looking rather like an invitation blank that had not yet been printed upon, lay twenty feet from the island. I did not believe there were any other mobile units left in the kitchen, but adrenalized as I was, I couldn't be sure. I stretched out my foot again, and when nothing attacked it, I leaped down and dived through the door. The air inside the pantry was sweet, musty. I flattened myself against the shelves and scanned the area. No sign of activity. I went to the opposite end of the room and thought what to do. A mad dash seemed to be the best solution—if I remained in the pantry, sooner or later the little army of machines would break through the kitchen door and push on in. The narrow windows that flanked the front door were of ordinary glass. If I could reach the entryway, I thought, I might be able to smash one of the windows and squeeze through it. I shrugged off my jacket and wrapped it about my right forearm. I cracked the pantry door, scanned. Then, one-shoed, I raced along the corridor. But on rounding a corner, I caught sight of a large indistinct shape hovering in the air, silhouetted against the light of the entryway. I put on the brakes. It was a moth, a gray death's-head moth with a ten-inch wingspan. Beyond it, also hovering, were a number of smaller moths. Twelve in all. I had manufactured them for McQuiddy, but he'd told me the client had rejected them as being too dangerous and that they would be returned. Each powered by a microscopic chip; a brush of their wings, coated with a contact poison, would cause a painful death. Amorise must have taken them to another craftsman and had them activated. The ultrasonic whistle, which I'd brought to counter a machine guarding her bedroom, would keep the moths away if I played the correct tones, but I had designed the moths to be difficult to control—the tones would have to be exact, and because I had not thought of them in some time, I was less than certain in my memory. Nevertheless, I had no choice. It was barely conceivable that Amorise had rendered them non-lethal, but I could not trust that she had. The fibers of the wings had been saturated with poison, and to minimize the effect would require painstaking work of which very few people were capable.

With trembling fingers, I took the whistle from the inside pocket of my jacket and set it to my lips. If I were to gasp, if my breath were to falter to the least degree as I played the pattern of notes, the moths would attack me. I moved forward, one careful step at a time, playing the progression that, I believed, would keep me safe. The largest moth drifted to within inches of my face, so close I could see every detail of the ghostly patterns on its carapace and read the words I had imprinted as a macabre joke half-hidden in the patterns—Death Courtesy of David LeGary. The tip of its wing fluttered past my cheek and then slid away without touching me. I had the urge to let out a sigh of relief, but I held firm and continued my inaudible tootling. Two more moths flittered near, and though my chest muscles tightened, I managed to keep my throat relaxed and played my way past them. A group of four, the smallest of the bunch, darted at me, dancing on air like gray leaves in a storm. I swallowed in reflex, but thankfully this occurred during an interval. I thought I heard my heart slugging against my chest wall. The five remaining moths formed into a picket line across the corridor. I mustered my resolve and went forward, my cheeks puffed, trying not to blink, watchful of their every flutter, and they parted before me, fluttering up toward the ceiling. Once past them I kept playing for a few steps, and then, my breath sobbing out, I ran.

As I came into the entryway, my feet skidded on the marble floor, but I righted myself and pushed hard toward the window to the right of the front door, showing like a narrow box of moonlight. Upon reaching it, I slammed my elbow against the glass, splintering it. But as I knocked aside the shards that remained stuck in the frame, I heard an electric gabbling at my back, and on turning, saw the army of household machines wobbling, whirring, vibrating, scuttling toward me. This time they did not hesitate. The toaster waddled forward, leading a group charge. I kicked at the thing and sent it flying, but it delivered a painful jolt to my ankle with its plug. A ceiling sweep bunched its silvery legs and propelled itself into a feathery leap that left it clinging to my shirtfront—I hurled it against the wall before it could sting me with its wire molding brushes. For the next two or three minutes, like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, I engaged in battle with this cartoonish troop, swinging the torch in wild arcs, brushing the sweeps off my clothing, crushing the littlest ones underfoot. But I received countless shocks, and at last one of the sweeps managed to scale the back of my trousers and shirt and deliver a jolt to my neck that knocked me flat.

I must have lost consciousness for a time, because when next I looked about, the army had withdrawn, leaving behind their scorched and crumpled casualties. Painfully, I struggled to my feet, and as I leaned against the door, trying to get my bearings, to decipher the patterns of moonlight and shadow that lay across the entryway, the lights went on, confusing me for an instant. Standing at the top of the stairs were Amorise and Joan Gwynne, both dressed in nightgowns. At the bottom of the stair, his back to the banister, was Carl McQuiddy, wearing black slacks and turtleneck. He offered me an amused smile. Amorise, too, smiled, but it was an expression of pure triumph. Joan appeared upset.

"That was epic, David," said Amorise. "Truly entertaining."

The workings of my mind were clumsy, impaired, and I could only stare at the three of them, though I felt anger pressing against the fogginess that hampered my thoughts, like a dome of heat bulging up from some buried molten turbulence. Then Amorise drew Joan into a kiss, one almost as deep as that she had given her on stage at the Martinique, and the anger broke through, not clearing my head but seeming to irradiate the fog.

"And, of course, your machines are delightful," Amorise said, breaking from the kiss. "Such a wonderful imagery. I imagine it must be strange for you to be attacked by them. Rather like old friends turning traitor."

I tried to speak, but succeeded only in making a strangled noise. McQuiddy chuckled and said to Amorise, "I don't think he's up to a conversation."

"Fuck you!" I said.

"Well, we don't really have much to say to one another, anyway." Amorise took Joan's hand and they descended partway down the stairs. "David knows what he has to do … don't you, David?"

"I'm not going to do anything for you," I told her. "And there's nothing you can do to make me."

"I don't know," Amorise said. "I might find a way. You tried to assault me at the club. You stole from my locker at Emerald Street. Now you've broken into my home and destroyed considerable of my property. Those are serious charges. What will you say in your defense? That I've kissed the soul of a poet dead these six hundred years into your body? That won't gain you much credence."

"I have a witness who'll back me up," I said. "John Wooten."

"Oh, I don't think you can count on John," McQuiddy said. "He was extremely distressed by the way you spoke to him earlier today."

That they had been privy to my private communications did not surprise me, but McQuiddy's assured demeanor was unnerving.

"You don't have any friends, David," Amorise said. "You offend everyone who tries to befriend you. No one cares about you. In fact, they'd love to see you fall."

I was beginning to regain control of my body, to be more aware of my surroundings. The chandelier that lit the entryway applied a high gloss to McQuiddy's forehead and put glittering points in the eyes of the two women.

"You did this!" I said to Amorise. "It's not me."

"Did I?" Amorise laughed. "The anger, the disdain for others … they've always been part of you. You were the perfect subject."

"Actually," McQuiddy said, "I think it's a distinct improvement. At least the bastard will serve some purpose now."

His smile acted on me like a goad, and I sprinted toward him. He flicked out a macroweb, but the strands dissolved as they touched me, and I knocked him off-balance with a glancing blow to the cheek. He recovered quickly and reached into his trouser pocket—for another weapon, I assumed. Before he could withdraw his hand, I struck him hard in the neck with my fist, and then again flush on the jaw. He fell backward, cracking his head on the banister, and went down. I stood over him, waiting for him to stand. His eyes were open, lips parted. Dark blood was pooling beneath his head, spreading across the marble floor. I knew he was dead, but I hunkered down beside him anyway and touched my fingers to his throat, hoping to detect a pulse. Yet at the same time I exulted in the death of my old tormentor, Tacque Thibault.

"Oh, David! What will you do now?"

Amorise was pointing a small caliber automatic with a chrome finish at me. Joan stood at her shoulder, her expression horrified.

"You can wait for the police here if you like," said Amorise. "Or if you prefer, you can make a run for it. But I can guarantee that the authorities will meet you at the ferry dock."

I wiped my fingers on my slacks to clean them of McQuiddy's blood and glared hatefully at her.

"There's something you may want to factor in to your decision," said Amorise, descending the stair—she gestured at me to move away from McQuiddy and I complied, retreating to the door. "Running will certainly lend the appearance of guilt. If you stay, you might be able to justify a plea of self-defense. Of course the validity of such a plea will depend upon my testimony. And I'm certain I'll be too distraught for several days to be clear on the details of what has happened here. Perhaps in the interim, you'll consider how you might influence my decision."

Once again I was astonished by the neatness of her scheme. I recalled Villon's fragmentary history, how he had been charged with murder and released once it was established that he had acted in self-defense. Had he begun writing "The Testament" while incarcerated, and changed his mind after his release? So I suspected, and I suspected further that Amorise had been instrumental in obtaining that release, and that when he had failed to complete the Text, she had subsequently managed to have him indicted for another capital crime, which she then managed to have commuted. She was duplicating those events to a nicety. The Sublime Act was halfway to being complete.

"For example," Amorise went on, "I might testify that I'd been having difficulty with your machines and called you here to make some adjustments. I might say that poor Carl had tampered with the machines with the idea of killing you. He has a history of enmity with you. You caught him in the act of sabotage. He attacked you and you defended yourself. Who knows what his specific motives might have been. An emotional entanglement, perhaps. It's well known that he was attracted to Joan."

I tried to catch Joan's eye. Concern was written in her face, but she refused to look at me. I believed she wanted to help me, but could not, being under Amorise's thrall.

Amorise kneeled beside McQuiddy and to my surprise, still pointing the gun at me, she kissed him on the mouth. She closed her eyes, as if savoring the kiss, and then smiled as if enjoying a subtle aftertaste. The kiss had been brief, not at all like the one she had given me at Emerald Street. I imagined the soul must quit the body more readily than it entered, and that McQuiddy's sour scrap of vitality now was lodged in some secret cavity within Amorise's flesh.

"It may cross your mind to try and take the gun from me," she said. "Let me assure you, I'm an excellent shot. I won't kill you, but I will happily cripple you. It'll make your self-defense plea slightly more difficult to justify. But I can always say I was confused—I thought you had attacked Carl and realized too late what the actual circumstances were."

I did not hesitate in making a decision, for in truth there was no decision to be made. She had walled me off from every possibility but one.

"I'll wait for the police," I said.

The guard ushered me into a closed-in metal booth equipped with a telephone and scored with graffiti, most of it obscene in character. Seated opposite me, separated by a divider of scarred, clear plastic, Amorise was wearing a green silk blouse adorned with delicate silver accents. Her long black hair was loose about her shoulders, and her hawkish face was made up to seem softer and more feminine. She picked up her receiver and asked, with no apparent irony, how I was doing.

"Is that a formality?" I asked. "Or do you really care?"

"Of course I care, David. You're dear to me … as you well know."

Though I despised her, I had become acclimated to hate—it was an environment in which I dwelled, and I felt I could speak to her without losing my temper.

"Then you'll be glad to hear I've been writing," I said, and held up several sheets of paper that I had brought with me from my cell.

"May I see?"

One after the other I pressed the pages against the plastic so she could read them. When she had done she said, "It's good … but not up to standard. You'll have to do better."

"I might be more highly motivated if you were to recover your memories of the crime of which I've been accused."

Her brow furrowed, expressing a transparently insincere degree of concern. "I'm working very hard in therapy. I'm sure I'll have a breakthrough soon." She brightened. "But I do have something to tell you. Whether you perceive it as an encouragement … that's entirely up to you."

I signaled that she should continue.

"Joan Gwynne, as you recall, came to embody the soul of Villon's lost love, Martha Laurens. Carl was Tacque Thibault. John Wooten … Guillaume du Villon. But have you ever asked yourself who embodies the soul of Amorise LeDore, and why, of all those people gathered in the Martinique to celebrate the inception of the Sublime Act, she is the only one with whom you have no apparent previous connection?"

"Is that important?"

"Everything is important, David." A note of venom crept into her voice. "Surely as a craftsman, a devisor of murderous machines, you realize the importance of details?"

"Very well," I said. "Who are you?"

"Let us suppose that this woman, the woman whom you know as Amorise LeDore, is also named Allison Villanueva. And that her brother Erik and her sister-in-law Carmen were murdered by one of your security devices." She gave these last two words a loathing emphasis. "Let us further suppose that in her grief Allison came to recognize that if the courts would not punish you, she must seek her own vengeance, and after the lawsuit against you was dismissed, she traveled from her home in Merida to do that very thing."

Astonished, I jumped to my feet and the guard stationed behind Amorise gestured at me with his baton. I sat back down. "What are you telling me!"

"What I'm telling you," she went on, "is what I am telling you. Make of it what you will." She reached into her purse and withdrew the book I had taken from her locker at Emerald Street Expansions. "Novallis. Did you notice, David, that by rearranging the letters you can also spell out the name Allison V? It's not a difficult chore to forge an antique, and Allison may have taken pains to do so. Or she may not. Did you verify the book's age?"

"No," I said in a tight voice. "I did not."

"Well, if you had, you might have discovered that the book, if a forgery, is a very good forgery. I doubt any expert would claim that it is inauthentic. Be that as it may …" She restored the book to her purse.

"I don't believe you!"

"What is it you don't believe? That I'm Allison, or that I'm Amorise? Perhaps both are true. That would suit the subtle character of the Sublime Act, would it not? The subjects must be suitable, and Allison is perfect for Amorise. But then, too, Amorise is precisely what Allison needed."

"You fucking witch!" I said. "Don't try to con me!"

"Why not, François? You're a natural-born mark."

"I know who you are … and I know who I am."

"Let's examine who you are," said Amorise. "I must confess I've deceived you to an extent. We did do a little something to you at Emerald Street."

"That's crap!" I said. "The woman there … the blonde. She told me the machine didn't work. The leads were burned out."

"Jane Eisley. She's a friend. Actually, you know her, too. You dated her sister at Stanford. There was some slight unpleasantness involved. A pregnancy, I believe. An abortion, a broken heart. And a very long time ago, you may have known her as Fat Margot, a Parisian prostitute."

I was at a loss, capable only of staring at her.

"We didn't have to do much," she said. "It's as I told you the other night, you were perfect for François. Well … almost perfect. I needed you to fall in love with Joan, so we tweaked your emotional depth a bit. The rest of it … the anger, the violence, the disdain. You supplied all that. But love was needed to make you fully inhabit those qualities, to bring them to flower." She fixed me with her disturbing green eyes. "Do you understand me, David. I wove the web, but you flew into it with passion, abandon, arrogance. All those qualities you thought you lacked and wanted to explore. From the moment we met, you surrendered yourself to me. You desired what I have given you … and what I have given you is yourself."

"What do you want?" I pressed my palms hard against the plastic barrier, hoping for a miraculous collapse that would allow my hands to close about her throat.

"No more than what I told you at the club. I want you to enact the laws of your nature. So far you're doing a splendid job." She settled back in her chair, folded her arms and regarded me coolly. "I'd like you to consider the possibilities. On the one hand, it's possible that this is no more than an ornate Latina cruelty. That Allison Villanueva has manipulated you through completely ordinary means in order to avenge her brother and her sister-in-law. That utilizing your suggestibility, your gullibility, your penchant for the macabre and your underused yet nonetheless potent imagination, she has persuaded you that a witch has come from the fifteenth century to implant the soul of François Villon into your body for some arcane purpose—something she may have done many times before. And now she's telling you that the entire scenario may be a fraud. That would be the logical conclusion … at least if we are to accept the logic of the age. On the other hand, it's conceivable that the story of the witch is true. Or, a third possibility, both stories are true. This speaks to the beautiful symmetry of the Sublime Act. It begins with a multitude of options, but eventually reduces those choices to three. Ultimately those three become indistinguishable."

It took all my strength to restrain anger—I wanted to yell at her, to revile her; but if I did the guards would return me to my cell, and I wanted to stay, to hear everything she had to say.

"Next," she said, "consider the character of the Sublime Act. I believe Guillaume du Villon told you that it was 'to ensure our continuance.' Were those not his words?"

I nodded.

"For the sake of argument, let's say that our continuation is simply the mechanism by which the Sublime Act is effected. Its character may well be something other than mere immortality. Why would a woman, a witch, wish to drag the same ninety-three souls forward in time, skipping like a stone across the centuries, causing the same event to be re-enacted over and over? What purpose could this painful form of immortality serve … if not vengeance? Do you see the correspondence, David? Why the subjects must be suitable? A crime, a terrible crime committed millennia ago, is redressed endlessly by conforming to a contemporary crime and thus achieves the most terrible of vengeances. The kind that never ends. An eternity of punishment. A hell that the object of vengeance creates for himself by enacting the laws of his nature. The Sublime Act. Sublime because the witch achieves sublimity through her creation. She is an artist, and vengeance is the canvas upon which she paints variations on a theme."

"What crime," I asked shakily, "could merit such a punishment?"

"Perhaps I've already told you. Perhaps someday I will tell you. Perhaps I'll never tell you. So many questions, David. Were some or all of your acquaintances in the Martinique acting, or were they, like you, manipulated by science or witchery or both? Is Joan Martha, and will you ever have her again? Or is she just another person whom you have wronged and who hates you with sufficient passion to be my complicitor? Could she have a connection to that ancient and possibly fraudulent crime? You will never answer any of these questions … unless you create the Text. Then you may discover the truth, or you may not. The thing you must accept is that whoever I am—Amorise or Allison or both—I own you. I control you. I may testify in such a way that you will be set free, but I will still control you. I'll continue to cause you pain. I've surrounded you with a circumstance you cannot escape. You may come to think that you can injure me, but you can't. My wealth and power insulate me. I swear you will never be happy in this life or any other. Not until I decide enough is enough. If, that is, I ever do."

She closed her purse and stood looking down at me. "There is one way out. But to take it you must go contrary to your nature. You can disobey me and not create the Text. Then I'll testify that you murdered Carl McQuiddy, and you will die. That's your choice, the only one I offer. To die now, or to create the Text and die after long years of suffering. What will you do, David … François? You can't believe a thing I've told you, and yet you cannot disbelieve me. The stuff of your being has been transmuted from confidence to doubt. Logic is no longer a tool that will work for you."

"I wouldn't be here," I said, "if I hadn't killed McQuiddy. It was an accident. You couldn't have predicted it."

"You always kill, François," she said. "A priest, a lawyer … Are not lawyers the true priests of our time? You're drawn to detest such authority as they represent. If you hadn't attacked McQuiddy, he would have attacked you. I own him as well." She let out a trickle of laughter, a sound of sly delight. "So many questions. And the answers are all so insubstantial. What will you do?"

She walked away and my anger faded, as if my soul had been kindled brightly by her presence, and now, deprived of her torments, I had sunk back into a less vital state of being. At the door she turned and looked at me, and for an instant it seemed I was gazing through her eyes at a man diminished by harsh light and plastic into a kind of shabby exhibit. Then she was gone, leaving me at the bottom of the world. I perceived my life to be a tunnel with a round opening at the far end lit like a glowing zero.

I let the guard lead me back to my cell. For a long time I sat puzzling over the conversation. A hundred plans occurred to me, a hundred clever outcomes, but each one foundered and was dissolved in the nets of Amorise's gauzy logic. Eventually a buzzer sounded, announcing lockdown. The gates of the cells slammed shut, the lights dimmed. Everything inside me seemed to dim. A man on the tier above began to sing, and someone threatened him with death unless he shut up. This initiated a chorus of shouted curses, screams, howls of pain. They seemed orchestrated into a perverse and chaotic opera, a terrible beauty, and I recalled a line from "The Testament" that read: "… only in horrid noises are there melodies …" I wondered what Villon had been thinking when he reached this point in the Act, what kind of man he had been before meeting Amorise. If, indeed, any of that had happened. For an instant, I felt a powerful assurance that the Act was a fraud, a mere device in the intricate design of Allison Villanueva's vengeance; but then this sense of assurance dissolved in a flurry of doubt. It would never be clear. Only one kind of clarity was available to me now.

From beneath my pillow I removed the stub of a candle I'd bought from a trustee. I lit it, dripped wax onto the rail of my iron bunk and stood the stub upright in the congealing puddle I had made, and as I did I seemed briefly to see an ancient prison, begrimed stone walls weeping with dampness, a grating of black iron centering a door of age-stained wood, a moldy blanket and straw for bedding. I slipped a writing tablet from beneath my mattress, thin and smelly as an old man's lust. I opened the tablet and set it upon my knee. It made no difference whether the woman who had done this to me was Allison or Amorise. Either version of reality provided the same sublime motivation. I felt words breaking off from the frozen cliffs of my soul and scattering like ice chips into plainspoken verse, the ironic speech of a failed heart. Then, in the midst of that modern medieval place, with the cries of the damned and the deranged and the condemned raining down about me, I began:

Villain and victim, both by choice and by chance
I hereby declare void all previous Testaments
Legal or otherwise, whether sealed by magistrate
Locked away in the rusty store of memory
Or scribbled drunkenly upon a bathroom wall
Not knowing whether it is I, LeGary, who writes …