Merlin Slept Here

Chapter 7: Very Advanced Innkeeping

  “It’s all about as curious as it can be,” said the Gryphon.

  -Lewis Carroll

  He made it back with the needle pointing to below empty, but without having to coast. In the early afternoon they accompanied their guests to the portal in the soybean field. The Magi were carrying their coats and cloaks in anticipation of colder weather at their destination of Mount Baldy. When the horse, now pulling the litter again, was in position, Clark spoke words in Kreenspam and the portal appeared. The dwarfs lit their lanterns.

  Clark, standing with Mr. Carlos folded over his arm, turned to Bob and Julie. “Thank you. You don’t know what a night’s peace has meant to us. Good luck. I ought to warn you that your next guests, if by any chance there are any, will probably be in a shocking condition.”

  “That’s what our last guests said about your group,” Julie said. “They were right.”

  “Yes, I guess they were. I hope everything goes OK for you. I probably won’t see you again, but if I do, I want to repay the favor.”

  “You could repay it now,” Bob said cheerily. When Clark looked at him questioningly, he added, “Let us go through the portal with you. How about it? Just a few steps and then we’ll come back.”

  Clark laughed. “You’ve never done it? Sure, come along just a little ways. I’ll speak to it so that it won’t close until after you come back. You’ll be a little portal lagged afterward, but it’s not nearly so bad when you come back through the same portal to the side where you started as it is when you pass through two portals in a row.”

  After speaking a few more sentences in Kreenspam, Clark led the horse and litter through, followed by the other Magi. Julie gripped Bob’s hand as they went through last.

  At once it was much darker, which Bob realized he should have expected, for he had been told that the portals admitted those entering only at dusk of the place entered, regardless of the time of day being left behind. The heat too, though great, was much drier than in Indiana, radiating from sand underfoot, and the horizons much farther off. Stars were appearing, but he could make out a few stunted trees and bushes silhouetted against the still glowing western sky. Oddly, another portal, faintly illumined, stood in the desert directly ahead, and the litter was just disappearing into it. They could see nothing of the horse on the other side of it. The Magi were following as if this were routine, and so Bob and Julie did too, still holding hands. As they passed through this second portal the ground seemed to shift under them. Julie stumbled over a low bush that appeared out of nowhere.

  Everyone now stopped, still in the same dry heat and the same surroundings. Bob and Julie walked over the sand to where Clark, illumined by the dwarfs’ lanterns, was holding the horse’s head.

  “What did you think of the portal?” Clark said.

  “Weren’t there two of them?” Julie asked.

  “Yes. This is a really rough old Magi road, and the portal pairs haven’t been realigned in decades. When they’ve pulled apart like that, the password usually opens both of them at the same time, but you have to walk through one, take a few steps, and then walk through the other, like we just did. As you saw, they both take you to roughly the same place, but it’s best to go through the second one too because the first one will usually land you farther away from the inn you’re aiming for. That second one, by the way, was a little rough. I think it dropped us a few inches coming out of it.”

  “It sure did,” Julie said.

  “At least you’ll know what to expect going back. But I think you can skip the second portal half when you return. It’ll reduce your portal lag. You be the judge.” Clark peered forward into the darkness. “There should be a paved road not far to the right that we can take, and it’s not much more than a mile to the next inn.”

  “Where are we?” Julie asked.

  “Wow, Africa,” Bob said with awe in his voice.

  “I know that, bub. I mean more exactly.”

  “Somewhere on the edge of the Sahara,” Clark answered. “I’d like to be more specific, but we Chosen ones don’t always think much in terms of conventional geography. I know exactly where we are on the Magi road, but I couldn’t point it out on a regular map.”

  “I think I understand,” Julie said. “It’s like knowing your way all around a building complex, but if someone asks you which way is north, you’re stumped.” She looked up at Bob. “Can we go back now?”

  They returned through the first of the divided portal halves, arriving back in the bean field and not in the desert land between portals that they had found when going the other direction. They decided this made some sort of sense, because they were going back now and either portal half was enough to return them to Indiana. It was not early afternoon, which had been their departure time, but early evening, for the portal had done its work as usual. Also, they were about a hundred yards farther out in the bean field than they had expected to be. Nearby was the second half of the portal exactly where it should not have been; that is, it was much farther from the inn than it had been when they left. Julie was for hiking the bean field and avoiding the second portal half, as Clark had suggested, but Bob would hear none of this. He wanted the full experience. So they passed through the second half of the portal as well and came out, at last, where they had expected to be, about fifty yards from the path through the overgrown fence row.

  They turned and looked at the portal, now appearing where it had always been, and Julie made a frustrated noise. “It doesn’t work the way you’d expect! Why were they so close together when we were between them, but when you’re not between them, they’re so far away that you can’t even see the other one?”

  “Beats me,” Bob said, pleased by this further mystery. “I wonder what would happen if we walked through the back of this one while it’s still open?”

  “I won’t do it!” Julie insisted, and fortunately—from her point of view—the portal arch disappeared at that moment.

  “And that too!” Bob said, snapping his fingers. “What happens if it disappears while you’re walking through it? Does it cut you in half?”

  “Ouch! How do you think of these things? Come on, let’s go home.”

  As Clark had predicted, they did feel portal lagged, that is, jittery and blue, but the worst of it passed off quickly.

  When they had returned to their inn, they talked for a few minutes about their satisfaction at getting their guests away safely. Now, they agreed, it was time for a breather. In fact, maybe they were done with innkeeping forever now. No more guests would come that evening, the Bernards would come claim the house keys, and they would drive to Mercury in Julie’s car, which had plenty of gas in it, and celebrate the Fourth with the Beckerhofs. Bob would stay a couple of nights there and on Friday would get paid at the Quali-Mart, gas up, and drive home to his grandfather’s house in Viola. But he and Julie would maintain their relationship, and he would soon be looking for full-time work in the Mercury area.

  But Bob did not pack his things, and Julie did not gather the cooking utensils, vases, and other items she had brought to the inn. Instead they moped around thinking about the last group of Magi trying to reach them. Eventually, Bob went out on the front porch and sat down, looking eastward down the Ghastly Path. Before long, Julie joined him.

  “We don’t have anything to feed them,” she said, remarking on the obvious.

  Bob did not answer.

  “Laban, this inn isn’t burned,” Jane Farrington whispered hoarsely to the griffin at her side.

  The beast nodded its great eagle’s head. Its wings were folded against its lion’s back as it strode forward, still shivering from the cold weather they had left behind. The snow had melted off them rapidly, leaving Jane’s clothes well wetted. But by what seemed her first bit of luck in days, she and the evacuees had stumbled out of the portal into a warm place—humid—even hot. The second bit was that, f
ollowing the Mage blazes on the trees, they had arrived at this inn that was still standing. She walked toward the front porch, too tired to look back and see if the others were still following. The Rebels might have control of this inn, but it was no use worrying about that. She and her companions could go no farther.

  A tall young man stepped out from the shadows of the porch. “Welcome to the inn,” he said excitedly. “My name’s Bob. What is that? Jesus, it’s a griffin—no two griffins! Are they tame? Are they OK to go in with you?”

  Plainly this was no Rebel. She told him that the griffins were safe.

  “Well, come on inside then. Where’s your luggage? Don’t you have any? Darn! How many of you are there?”

  Jane did not even know. She merely trudged on, allowing herself to be led inside by a young woman who appeared to be this innkeeper’s wife and who introduced herself only by her first name. This, and the young woman’s few and skimpy clothes (as Jane judged such things), told her that she was in some century after her own early nineteenth. But her brief tenure as an innkeeper, bringing her into contact with women of other eras, had already taught her not to be too shocked by feminine immodesty. She smiled weakly at Julie and wispily introduced herself.

  She found a seat on a couch in the parlor, where Harsha soon joined her. She knew that Harsha had lost her inn too, would have known, even if Laban had not told her, by the smoky smell of the East Indian girl’s clothing. Beyond this, Jane knew little about her, for the girl spoke no English. Nevertheless, as fellow former innkeepers they sat together, and Jane pressed her hand. They took off their cloaks and Jane pushed back her bonnet as the room slowly filled with their band of refugees. The innkeeper Bob kept busy fetching chairs from other rooms to seat them (except the griffins, who posed like statues on each side of the hearth).

  Jane found that, despite the heat, her lower lip was trembling. No wonder. She was a refugee with no home to go back to. She was hunted. In the leather bag at her side was the pistol with which she had killed a man.

  When all the guests were settled Bob sought her out, coming to stand near her.

  “I’ll bet you’re Jane Farrington, right? I knew it! I heard about you from the last group. I guess we’re neighbors in a way. Portal neighbors.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you,” she said flatly, for she was already weary of his unsuitable cheer and energy.

  “Any other English speakers?”

  “No, sir, I think I’m the only one who speaks English and is able to talk.”

  “I know what you mean. Some of your group look like zombies on sedatives. What’s wrong with that guy over there?”

  He pointed to a young black man in a poncho, black trousers, and soft leather boots. He was seated where another Mage had placed him, his head tilted to one side, staring vacantly. Jane had thought herself cried out, but the tears started to tumble again.

  “Joshua is in a walking trance. So is the Chinese woman there in the corner—I don’t know her name. The Rebels got them with drugged drinks.”

  “Gee, I’m sorry. They’ve had it rough. And come to think of it, he must be really out of it if he can sit on that chair and have no reaction. That chair is conjured to the max. What about her?” He pointed to another Asian woman whose throat was bandaged.

  “I don’t know all their names. They just came to my inn in the night, I mean to not far from where it stood. It’s gone, burned before they came. Harsha’s too. Burned. Laban said that woman is a Song Mage, which makes it all the worse. They cut her throat, and I think her vocal cords were damaged. That man there,” she pointed at a long haired, clean shaven man in medieval clothing, “is a lutist, I know, because Laban says he keeps moaning about how he’s lost his lute, that the Rebels broke it. The one next to him,” pointing to a man cringing in a corner with his hand over his face, “is a Wise Man. He talks sometimes in Kreenspam.”

  “You speak Kreenspam?”

  “No, just a few phrases and portal commands that the guests taught me.”

  “Say, maybe they’ll teach me some of that stuff.”

  Bob paused and stood staring at another guest who was hunched over, whimpering. His whimpers came in staccato, however, and he disappeared and reappeared several times a second.

  “What’s he, a Mage strobe light?”

  “Maslov is an Invisibility Mage,” she said wearily. “He keeps trying to keep hidden, but he hasn’t the strength left.”

  “Poor guy. How’d you learn all about them if they can’t speak English? You said somebody named Laban?”

  She gestured toward one of the griffins. “Laban is a changeling and was in human form when they found me in the woods near what’s left of my inn. He speaks English. He told me some things about the others.”

  “What about the other griffin? Who is he?”

  “He’s just a griffin. Very intelligent but not a Mage.”

  Bob laughed. “How do you tell them apart?”

  “Sir, I don’t!” she answered sharply. “Why are you asking me all this?”

  “Sorry. So if the last two inns are burned, how’d they get here? Just push on through?”

  She nodded. “What else? They circled the lake at Harsha’s inn. Harsha must have joined them somewhere in that valley, but I don’t know how she got away from the Rebels. It was a long walk for them in the cold, but if it hadn’t been so cold, the Rebels would have been waiting just the other side of the portal and would have massacred them. As it was, the Rebels were on the watch for them from the ruins and the outbuildings of Harsha’s inn, where they were taking shelter. They came out across the ice and attacked. I don’t know how the other Magi got the ones in walking trances to run then, but they must have, because it was a race to the other portal, and these that you see are the ones who made it. The rest were shot down or stabbed.

  “Then when the survivors passed the portal and came into my woods, they found it snowing hard. It was the second day of a blizzard. That’s what saved them, that the Rebels were staying in my inn’s stable, which they’d left standing—staying inside because you could get lost if you went twenty yards from it.” Her brow wrinkled. “Actually some of them were in some sort of glass room that floats above the ground.” She shook her head slowly as if to dismiss the puzzling memory. “The Magi came across me, though, and I could lead them over my own land even in the storm. I guided them around by a back path and so through the portal to here.”

  “What were you doing when they found you? Just sort of standing out in the woods in the snow?”

  “What else was there to do? Why are you asking me all this? My inn’s gone, and it’s miles from it to a neighbor. I was just walking in circles when they found me. I had been for hours. I wish I’d just stayed in the inn when it burned.”

  “I know what you mean,” he said, “but I’m glad you didn’t. We’ll need your help now to help care for them and get them settled in rooms.”

  She stood up and looked around, her young face twisted with emotion. “No, we have to get out of here! They’re right behind us, don’t you know that? Where is the next portal?”

  To her surprise, she found herself levered down forcefully by the big fellow.

  “You just stay right here and rest. Julie? Conference in the kitchen. We’ve got to talk.”

  When they had left their guests behind, closing the door of the living room as they went to the kitchen, Bob admitted to Julie that he had called her out to talk not because he had a plan but because he had none. The portal’s dusk gate would still be open to the Rebels for hours, so it seemed to make sense to try to hurry this group of guests on through the west portal, as Jane had said. But he and Julie were innkeepers not slave drivers. He could not shove the guests out the door, he said, and if he did, they would probably just be caught and attacked at the next inn, the one in Africa, if not on the long, dry road leading to it.

  He pac
ed the worn tile floor, checkered in squares of green and yellow, and continued thinking out loud. Should they try to ferry the guests away in Julie’s car, and if so, where to?

  Finally Julie interrupted him. “Bob? Bob, hello? Didn’t you see their faces? You can forget about them going anywhere for now. They’re exhausted and portal lagged and maybe frost bitten. They’re a pretty young group, but they still look like a bunch of candidates for a nursing home.”

  “Sure they’re young,” he said. “That’s because the older ones couldn’t keep up the pace. They fell behind and got plugged.”

  “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that! How awful. What things this group must have seen! But the point is they’ve got to have a night here. We’ve got to give them that. I’m going to start showing them to rooms upstairs.”

  “With the Rebels practically at the door?”

  Instead of answering, Julie gave him a look such as he had never seen from her, a wild look, as if she had just agreed to play Russian roulette.

  He finally stood still. “What is it?”

  “Merlin’s group is the last to make it through,” she said. “That means these don’t.”

  She was right. He had of course known this but had been pushing it out of his thoughts. But Bis’ history book had spoken. Even if they had had any hope that the book could be wrong, present circumstances belied the hope. What had he expected, that he and Julie could outmaneuver an army? No, they were nothing but innkeepers. Saving their guests was beyond them. They would provide shelter and beds and leave the rest to fate, God, or—whoever this Ulrumman was that Clark said had a nasty habit of disappointing good people.

  “So they stay here,” she said. “There’s no alternative.”

  “Not enough beds,” was his only answer.

  “There are if we double them up in the beds, and put the griffins on easy chairs or the couch, and don’t sleep ourselves.”

  He nodded slowly. “OK, start getting them upstairs.”

  But they were interrupted by a firm knock at the front door. He barely started. He had been expecting this anyway.

  “That would be murderers,” he said.

  “Nonsense. Murderers don’t knock,” she replied stoutly.

  “So maybe it’s my Aunt and Uncle.”

  They went to the door and opened it. Bob turned on the porch light. There stood Clark Devon, his dog beside him and Professor Carlos folded over his arm. Behind him on the porch stood the dwarfs and Kim. In the yard was the horse, and behind it the litter with Merlin on it.

  “Sorry, Bob,” Clark said. “We had to turn back. The next innkeeper, Ali, came along the road to warn us that the Rebels got to his inn ahead of us, and they’re burning it. There’s no cover there in that desert, not a tree big enough to hide behind, so we had to come back through the portal.”

  For a time everyone just stood there.

  “But you’ve been gone for at least an hour,” Julie said. “What were you doing?”

  “No, we’ve only been gone a few minutes from our point of view, but when we came back through the portal it did it’s thing and—”

  “And brought you back here in the evening like it did us,” she finished for him. “That’s right, I know how it works. Only, why was the delay longer for you than it was for us?”

  “This is not the perfect time for explanations,” Clark said, “but if you must know, it’s because the amount of delay is unpredictable except within a range of some hours. The point is we’re blocked. The Rebels must have found some kind of side road, some portal we didn’t know about that intersects this road farther along, maybe beyond the African inn. Anyway, they headed us off.”

  Another pause.

  “But Merlin’s group was supposed to make it through!” Bob said insistently. “It says so in Mage history, in a history book from the future.”

  “Then the historians must have made a mistake,” Clark said sharply. “Historians do. It happens all the time.”

  Another pause.

  “OK, we’ve got another group of guests here,” Bob said in a strained voice.

  Clark groaned. “Don’t tell us you don’t have room. I know this is a death trap: it’s the last inn, and they’ve got all the others before and behind; but we have to get Kim and her baby inside.”

  “Of course,” Julie said. “We’ll get them straight into the same room they were in before.”

  “Right, do that, Julie,” Bob said. “Come on, all of you,” he added loudly, gesturing. “Everyone into the inn. Clark, tell the dwarfs they can unhitch the horse and carry Merlin upstairs. Nobody else to a room yet. We’ve got to make a plan for where we’ll bed you down.”

  Clark translated this into Kreenspam for the Magi, and while the dwarfs were unhitching the horse, Bob went back into the crowded living room, picked up the phone receiver, and dialed 911 on the rotary dial.

  “Dispatcher,” said someone on the phone, and the voice was oddly young and almost recognizable.

  “Please send squad cars to 16024 Grantham,” he said. “Everything you’ve got. We’ve got a situation here. Some criminals with guns are near the house, and we’re in a lot of danger. Better send ambulances too.”

  “Right. We’ll send squad cars and ambulances fast.”

  Bob tensed. “Logan? Is that Logan!”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “What are you doing on the police line?”

  “I’m just covering for Arnie, the regular guy. He had to take a nap. Don’t worry, I’ll get you help.”

  For a moment Bob was too preoccupied to reply. He had been caught in the Wandering Wood because Logan had come to the inn, and the wood’s spell was in force only when an enemy was near. He remembered that Logan’s father was a policeman. So the boy had used his familiarity with the force to somehow get control of the police phone on this very night of all nights. Bob found some difficulty in breathing. The Goth boy was with the Rebels! Of course.

  “I know you’re not really going to call anybody,” he said flatly.

  Logan laughed. “You know why I don’t care that you know that? Because you’re dead meat; you won’t live through the night. Julie either. Don’t try to run away, either, you son of a bitch. You’ll get your ass shot.”

  When Logan had hung up in his ear, Bob’s feeling of being trapped intensified. Julie, he noticed, was leading more of the Chosen out of the living room and up to bedrooms. Suddenly the impossibility of finding places for them all to lie down seemed to him more disturbing than anything. Rule number four stated that no guest must ever sleep on the floor, but now it was inevitable. Julie would fill the beds with ten of the guests and the couch with one. Merlin could perhaps remain on his litter, which technically might not be considered the floor, and the griffins could sleep in arm chairs. But then what? Didn’t that leave one or two left over? Since they were all about to be murdered, he acknowledged that this was an irrational train of thought, but he could not seem to shake free of it. He perceived that he was cracking under the strain.

  Making small sounds like a dental patient under insufficient anesthetic, he paced out the front door and into the driveway, passing Merlin’s huge horse, which was now grazing on the lawn again. His car and Julie’s Geo were in the driveway. He could try to drive the Geo to town quickly, a round trip of only eight miles, and bring back the police. But how long would he be held there, making explanations, trying to convince them to come while not telling so much of the truth as to convince them of his insanity? No, the Rebels would come while he was gone. Instead, as a precaution he decided to move the cars away from the house. Julie had left her keys in the Geo’s ignition. With the lights off, he slowly drove it onto the road and turned down a private dirt road, a mere tractor path, in a field on the opposite side from the inn. He parked out there, went back and got his own car, and did the same.

  Leaving the cars, he mounted a small knoll
from which he could survey the inn. He stood still and looked. All the lights were on. They should have had blackout curtains like Peterbridge’s home in World War II England. Also, he could see the sign he had made, now backlit by the porch light, the sign which plainly identified this as a wizards’ inn. So why hadn’t he just painted a huge bull’s eye on the place? He could hear the pops and rumbles of distant fireworks, much louder and more frequent tonight because it was Independence Day. Yes, how convenient for the Rebels that they could indulge in a barrage of gunfire tonight and no one would think anything of it! His few neighbors would just think it was more celebrations.

  “They’ve won,” he said to himself softly. The Rebels were already triumphing within themselves, the inn as good as burned. So no more need for him to try to do impossible things. He had never despaired before and, not surprisingly, found he did not like how it felt. He was sorry he had left Julie the hopeless task of finding enough beds for all the doomed guests, but he was in no hurry to go back in.

  Suddenly he found that someone was standing next to him in the dark.

  “Excuse me. I’m in need of a room for the night.”

  Though his heart drummed from the surprise, Bob felt no inner sense of warning, so this had to be someone who was OK. One more guest must have gotten through the portal and somehow wandered over to this side of Grantham Road. He considered explaining to this person (from the sound of him an elderly man) the situation of the inn: stuffed to overflowing with damaged wizards, and an army of murderers expected presently. Sure, come on in. He began to laugh.

  The man waited till he had calmed himself with a great effort. “I need a place to stay,” he repeated.

  His voice sounded like the old man he had encountered during the night that he had been lost in the Wandering Wood. Yes, come to think of it, that man had said he would come back in a few days. Stringer’s rules card said not to turn away a guest, not even if the place was on fire.

  “You’re welcome to the inn,” Bob said.

  When he brought the man inside, they found Julie just spreading a blanket over an exhausted Mage who was stretched out on the kitchen table.

  “That’s the last of them,” she said with something like cheer. “Nobody sleeps on the floor around here.”

  He hugged her. “You’re a genius.”

  “Not very. Who is this?”

  He now turned to his guest, who in the light of the house was revealed as a handsome old fellow in a pin-stripe suit. He wore wire rim glasses and had a dapper white beard. No hobo, as he had once guessed. The gentleman carried no luggage.

  “I’m Bob and this is Julie, Mr., uh….”

  “Mr. Johns.” He shook both their hands.

  Julie asked their pardon, saying that she wanted to go check on Kim and her baby.

  When she had left them, Bob said, “I’m sorry, sir, but we’re out of beds. There’s nothing left but the floor. Also, I should warn you that the inn is about to be invaded by bloody killers.”

  Mr. Johns gripped him by the shoulder and looked up at him with a smile. “No need to apologize. You’re doing a fine job. The innkeeper makes the inn, and I highly approve of how you run this place, you and your friend. Now don’t trouble yourself over a canny old traveler like me. I’ll find a place for myself.”

  He stepped away, opened the door to the basement, and went down the stairs. Bob did not even consider following him. With all the troubles and dangers he was facing, having a dotty but omniscient old coot wandering down there was not a concern. Instead, he checked on the two Magi in his own ground floor bedroom and found that they were already sleeping. One was a boy so young he must be a mere teenager; the other was the long-haired man whose lute, no doubt magical, had been broken.

  He left them and, going to the front door, turned off the porch light and stood looking out across the dark yard. How much longer would it be before the Rebels came? He stepped outside, lifted the inn sign off its hooks and carried it back in. At least he would not give them that plain an announcement. Stretching upward, he placed the sign on top of a high kitchen cabinet above the sink counter. The Mage lying on the kitchen table, he saw, was asleep.

  The inn was nearly quiet now, and he took the opportunity to reconsider what Bis had told them. Her history book was wrong. If she had just been able to tell them what would really happen, if he had known that he would be present for a massacre, then he would not have hung around for it. On the other hand, yes he would have. He remembered Mr. Omlish’s words to him: ‘I like you, but you won’t live long.’ No, he would not have missed all this for anything.

  Suddenly, from up the stairs came the sound of a woman’s voice wailing in agony, and in a split second the monstrous thought formed in his mind: the baby is dead. He ran up the stairs, as if speed made any difference.

  Kim was sharing her room with a Mage woman that Bob had not yet much noticed, a dark blonde in her early thirties and dressed presently in a loose floor-length gown. It was this woman’s face that stood out for him, twisted and creased with grief, eyes closed, as she sat on the bed beside Kim. Kim herself was sobbing, holding the baby in her arms. Julie was talking to her, trying to take the baby from her. She wailed again and would not let it go.

  Clark appeared at the door, his dog with him, and spoke gently to the mother in Kreenspam. After a few minutes her face went slack and she gave up the child to Julie, who carried it to Bob. He took it from her. It was wearing only a wrapping of linen around its hips. He shrank from the touch of its flesh, which already seemed to him to be growing cold. This was the worst yet.

  “I don’t know what to do with it,” he whispered to Julie.

  “Bury it,” she said.

  “I’m afraid to go outside.”

  “Take it to the basement, then. Anything.”

  He went downstairs with the child, and finding the basement door ajar, opened it. The light was on down there, he saw. He must have left it on, needlessly adding to the power bill. But no, of course it was Mr. Johns. When he reached the bottom of the stair he found the old man stretched out on the remnant of old basement wall, using a cardboard box for a pillow, and by the light of the bare bulb in the ceiling, reading a little book. So the old man had found a place to lie up off the floor, one Bob had not considered. But with Mr. Johns settled in, he of course could not leave the baby here. He started to turn away and go back up.

  “Oh, pardon me,” said Mr. Johns, getting up. “Just let me get out of your way.”

  “No, sir, please lie down again. I have a dead kid here. I just don’t know what to do with him—or her.”

  “Her,” Mr. Johns supplied with odd certainty, slipping the book into an inner pocket of his jacket. “But surely you meant to lay her here?” He gestured to the wall stones on which he had been lying.

  Bob looked at the stones stupidly. “You know about that? What they do? You mean I should do like with the bugs?”

  “Surely that’s what you intended?”

  Bob did not tell him that he had intended to find some box to put the little corpse in and then leave it there. Instead, he went to the ledge-like wall and bent down. He laid the baby on its back on one of the stones and pulled his hands back, holding his breath. In a second or two the tiny chest began to move up and down. She made a sound. Her eyes opened.

  He lost his strength and sat down suddenly on the floor.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” said Mr. Johns.

  “Oh, God, she sure is.”

  “Better take her back to her mother.”

  Leaving the old man in the basement, Bob did so. He pounded up the stairs in a risky hurry, considering what he was holding, and re-entered the mother’s room. He found all three women seated together on the edge of the bed, arms around each other, all crying.

  He held out the baby girl to her mother. “Look, she’s alive!”