Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,
And through them passes a wild motley throng.
Men from Volga and Tartar steppes.
Featureless figures from the Hoang-ho,
Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt and Slav,
Flying the Old World's poverty and scorn;
These bringing with them unknown gods and rites,
Those tiger passions here to stretch their claws,
In street and alley what strange tongues are these,
Accents of menace in our ear,
Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew.

-Thomas Bailey Aldrich, "The Unguarded Gates," 1882

 One moment Shadow was riding the World's Largest Carousel, holding on to his eagle-headed tiger, and then the red and white lights of the carousel stretched and shivered and went out, and he was falling through an ocean of stars, while the mechanical waltz was replaced by a pounding rhythmic roll and crash, as of cymbals or the breakers on the shores of a far ocean.

The only light was starlight, but it illuminated everything with a cold clarity. Beneath him his mount stretched and padded, its warm fur under his left hand, its feathers beneath his right.

"It's a good ride, isn't it?" The voice came from behind him, in his ears and in his mind.

Shadow turned, slowly, streaming images of himself as he moved, frozen moments, each him captured in a fraction of a second, every tiny movement lasting for an infinite period. The images that reached his mind made no sense: it was like seeing the world through the multifaceted jeweled eyes of a dragonfly, but each facet saw something completely different, and he was unable to combine the things he was seeing, or thought he was seeing, into a whole that made any sense.

He was looking at Mr. Nancy, an old black man with a pencil mustache, in his check sports jacket and his lemon-yellow gloves, riding a carousel lion as it rose and lowered, high in the air; and, at the same time, in the same place, he saw a jeweled spider as high as a horse, its eyes an emerald nebula, strutting, staring down at him; and simultaneously he was looking at an extraordinarily tall man with teak-colored skin and three sets of arms, wearing a flowing ostrich-feather headdress, his face painted with red stripes, riding an irritated golden lion, two of his six hands holding on tightly to the beast's mane; and he was also-seeing a young black boy, dressed in rags, his left foot all swollen and crawling with blackflies; and last of all, and behind all these things, Shadow was looking at a tiny brown spider, hiding under a withered ocher leaf.

Shadow saw all these things, and he knew they were the same thing.

"If you don't close your mouth," said the many things that were Mr. Nancy, "somethin's goin' to fly in there."

Shadow closed his mouth and swallowed, hard.

There was a wooden hall on a hill, a mile or so from them. They were trotting toward the hall, their mounts' hooves and feet padding noiselessly on the dry sand at the sea's edge.

Czernobog trotted up on his centaur. He tapped the human arm of his mount. "None of this is truly happening," he said to Shadow. He sounded miserable. "Is all in your head. Best not to think of it."

Shadow saw a gray-haired old Eastern-European immigrant, with a shabby raincoat and one iron-colored tooth, true. But he also saw a squat black thing, darker than the darkness that surrounded them, its eyes two burning coals; and he saw a prince, with long flowing black hair and a long black mustache, blood on his hands and his face, riding, naked but for a bear skin over his shoulder, on a creature half-man, half-beast, his face and torso blue-tattooed with swirls and spirals.

"Who are you?" asked Shadow. "What are you?"

Their mounts padded along the shore. Waves broke and crashed implacably on the night beach.

Wednesday guided his wolf-now a huge and charcoal-gray beast with green eyes-over to Shadow. Shadow's mount caracoled away from it, and Shadow stroked its neck and told it not to be afraid. Its tiger tail swished, aggressively. It occurred to Shadow that there was another wolf, a twin to the one that Wednesday was riding, keeping pace with them in the sand dunes, just a moment out of sight.

"Do you know me, Shadow?" said Wednesday. He rode his wolf with his head high. His right eye glittered and flashed, his left eye was dull. He wore a cloak with a deep, monklike cowl, and his face stared out from the shadows. "I told you I would tell you my names. This is what they call me. I am called Glad-of-War, Grim, Raider, and Third. I am One-Eyed. I am called Highest, and True-Guesser. I am Grimnir, and I am the Hooded One. I am All-Father, and I am Gondlir Wand-Bearer. I have as many names as there are winds, as many titles as there are ways to die. My ravens are Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory; my wolves are Freki and Geri; my horse is the gallows." Two ghostly-gray ravens, like transparent skins of birds, landed on Wednesday's shoulders, pushed their beaks into the side of Wednesday's head as if tasting his mind, and flapped out into the world once more.

What should I believe? thought Shadow, and the voice came back to him from somewhere deep beneath the world, in a bass rumble: Believe everything.

"Odin?" said Shadow, and the wind whipped the word from his lips.

"Odin," whispered Wednesday, and the crash of the breakers on the beach of skulls was not loud enough to drown that whisper. "Odin," said Wednesday, tasting the sound of the words in his mouth. "Odin," said Wednesday, his voice a triumphant shout that echoed from horizon to horizon. His name swelled and grew and filled the world like the pounding of blood in Shadow's ears.

And then, as in a dream, they were no longer riding toward a distant hall. They were already there, and their mounts were tied in the shelter beside the hall.

The hall was huge but primitive. The roof was thatched, the walls were wooden. There was a fire burning in the center of the hall, and the smoke stung Shadow's eyes.

"We should have done this in my mind, not in his," muttered Mr. Nancy to Shadow. "It would have been warmer there."

"We're in his mind?"

"More or less. This is Valaskjalf. It's his old hall."

Shadow was relieved to see that Nancy was now once more an old man wearing yellow gloves, although his shadow shook and shivered and changed in the flames of the fire, and what it changed into was not always entirely human.

There were wooden benches against the walls, and, sitting on them or standing beside them, perhaps ten people. They kept their distance from each other: a mixed lot, who included a dark-skinned, matronly woman in a red sari, several shabby-looking businessmen, and others, too close to the fire for Shadow to be able to make them out.

"Where are they?" whispered Wednesday fiercely, to Nancy. "Well? Where are they? There should be dozens of us here. Scores!"

"You did all the inviting," said Nancy. "I think it's a wonder you got as many here as you did. You think I should tell a story, to start things off?"

Wednesday shook his head. "Out of the question."

"They don't look very friendly," said Nancy. "A story's a good way of gettin' someone on your side. And you don't have a bard to sing to them."

"No stories," said Wednesday. "Not now. Later, there will be time for stories. Not now."

"No stories. Right. I'll just be the warm-up man." And Mr. Nancy strode out into the firelight with an easy smile.

"I know what you are all thinkin'," he said, "You are thinking, What is Compe Anansi doin', comin' out to talk to you all, when the All-Father called you all here, just like he called me here? Well, you know, sometimes people need remindin' of things. I look around when I come in, and I thought, where's the rest of us? But then I thought, just because we are few and they are many, we are weak, and they are powerful, it does not mean that we are lost.

"You know, one time I saw Tiger down at the water hole: he had the biggest testicles of any animal, and the sharpest claws, and two front teeth as long as knives and as sharp as blades. And I said to him, Brother Tiger, you go for a swim, I'll look after your balls for you. He was so proud of his balls. So he got into the water hole for a swim, and I put his balls on, and left him my own little spider balls. And then, you know what I did? I ran away, fast as my legs would take me.

"I didn't stop till I got to the next town. And I saw Old Monkey there. You lookin' mighty fine, Anansi, said Old Monkey. I said to him, You know what they all singin' in the town over there? What are they singin'? he asks me. They singin' the funniest song, I told him. Then I did a dance, and I sings,

Tiger's balls, yeah,
I ate Tiger's balls
Now ain't nobody gonna stop me ever at all
Nobody put me up against the big black wall
'Cos I ate that Tiger's testimonials
I ate Tiger's balls.

"Old Monkey he laughs fit to bust, holding his side and shakin', and stampin', then he starts singin' Tiger's balls, I ate Tiger's balls, snappin' his fingers, spinnin' around on his two feet. That's a fine song, he says, I'm goin' to sing it to all my friends. You do that, I tell him, and I head back to the water hole.

"There's Tiger, down by the water hole, walkin' up and down, with his tail switchin' and swishin' and his ears and the fur on his neck up as far as they can go, and he's snappin' at every insect comes by with his huge old saber teeth, and his eyes flashin' orange fire. He looks mean and scary and big, but danglin' between his legs, the littlest balls in the littlest blackest most wrinkledy ball-sack you ever did see.

"Hey, Anansi, he says, when he sees me, you were supposed to be guarding my balls while I went swimming. But when I got out of the swimming hole, there was nothing on the side of the bank but these little black shriveled-up good-for-nothing spider balls I'm wearing.

"I done my best, I tells him, but it was those monkeys, they come by and eat your balls all up, and when I tell them off, then they pulled off my own little balls. And I was so ashamed I ran away.

"You a liar, Anansi, says Tiger. I'm going to eat your liver. But then he hears the monkeys coming from their town to the water hole. A dozen happy monkeys, boppin' down the path, clickin' their fingers and singin' as loud as they could sing,

Tiger's balls, yeah,
I ate Tiger's balls
Now ain't nobody gonna stop me ever at all
Nobody put me up against the big black wall
'Cos I ate that Tiger's testimonials
I ate Tiger's balls.

"And Tiger, he growls, and he roars and he's off into the forest after them, and the monkeys screech and head for the highest trees. And I scratch my nice new big balls, and damn they felt good hangin' between my skinny legs, and I walk on home. And even today, Tiger keeps chasin' monkeys. So you all remember: just because you're small, doesn't mean you got no power."

Mr. Nancy smiled, and bowed his head, and spread his hands, accepting the applause and laughter like a pro, and then he turned and walked back to where Shadow and Czernobog were standing.

"I thought I said no stories," said Wednesday.

"You call that a story?" said Nancy. "I barely cleared my throat. Just warmed them up for you. Go knock them dead."

Wednesday walked out into the firelight, a big old man with a glass eye in a brown suit and an old Armani coat. He stood there, looking at the people on the wooden benches, saying nothing for longer than Shadow could believe someone could comfortably say nothing. And, finally, he spoke.

"You know me," he said. "You all know me. Some of you have no cause to love me, but love me or not, you know me."

There was a rustling, a stir among the people on the benches.

"I've been here longer than most of you. Like the rest of you, I figured we could get by on what we got. Not enough to make us happy, but enough to keep going.

"That may not be the case anymore. There's a storm coming, and it's not a storm of our making."

He paused. Now he stepped forward, and folded his arms across his chest.

"When the people came to America they brought us with them. They brought me, and Loki and Thor, Anansi and the Lion-God, Leprechauns and Kobolds and Banshees, Kubera and Frau Holle and Ashtaroth, and they brought you. We rode here in their minds, and we took root. We traveled with the settlers to the new lands across the ocean.

"The land is vast. Soon enough, our people abandoned us, remembered us only as creatures of the old land, as things that had not come with them to the new. Our true believers passed on, or stopped believing, and we were left, lost and scared and dispossessed, only what little smidgens of worship or belief we could find. And to get by as best we could.

"So that's what we've done, gotten by out on the edges of things, where no one was watching us too closely.

"We have, let us face it and admit it, little influence. We prey on them, and we take from them, and we get by; we strip and we whore and we drink too much; we pump gas and we steal and we cheat and we exist in the cracks at the edges of society. Old gods, here in this new land without gods."

Wednesday paused. He looked from one to another of his listeners, grave and statesmanlike. They stared back at him impassively, their faces masklike and unreadable. Wednesday cleared his throat, and he spat, hard into the fire. It flared and flamed, illuminating the inside of the hall.

"Now, as all of you will have had reason aplenty to discover for yourselves, there are new gods growing in America, clinging to growing knots of belief: gods of credit card and freeway, of Internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon. Proud gods, fat and foolish creatures, puffed up with their own newness and importance.

"They are aware of us, and they fear us, and they hate us," said Odin. "You are fooling yourselves if you believe otherwise. They will destroy us, if they can. It is time for us to band together. It is time for us to act."

The old woman in the red sari stepped into the firelight. On her forehead was a small dark blue jewel. She said, "You called us here for this nonsense?" And then she snorted, a snort of mingled amusement and irritation.

Wednesday's brows lowered. "I called you here, yes. But this is sense, Mama-ji, not nonsense. Even a child could see that."

"So I am a child, am I?" She wagged a finger at him. "I was old in Kalighat before you were dreamed of, you foolish man. I am a child? Then I am a child, for there is nothing in your foolish talk to see."

Again, a moment of double vision; Shadow saw the old woman, her dark face pinched with age and disapproval, but behind her he saw something huge, a naked woman with skin as black as a new leather jacket, and lips and tongue the bright red of arterial blood. Around her neck were skulls, and her many hands held knives, and swords, and severed heads.

"I did not call you a child, Mama-ji," said Wednesday, peaceably. "But it seems self-evident-"

"The only thing that seems self-evident," said the old woman, pointing (as behind her, through her, above her, a black finger, sharp-taloned, pointed in echo), "is your own desire for glory. We've lived in peace in this country for a long time. Some of us do better than others, I agree. I do well. Back in India, there is an incarnation of me who does much better, but so be it. I am not envious. I've watched the new ones rise, and I've watched them fall again." Her hand fell to her side. Shadow saw that the others were looking at her: a mixture of expressions-respect, amusement, embarrassment-in their eyes. "They worshiped the railroads here, only a blink of an eye ago. And now the iron gods are as forgotten as the emerald hunters..."

"Make your point, Mama-ji," said Wednesday.

"My point?" Her nostrils flared. The corners of her mouth turned down. "I-and I am obviously only a child-say that we wait. We do nothing. We don't know that they mean us harm."

"And will you still counsel waiting when they come in the night and they kill you, or they take you away?"

Her expression was disdainful and amused: it was all in the lips and the eyebrows and the set of the nose. "If they try such a thing," she said, "they will find me hard to catch, and harder still to kill."

A squat young man sitting on the bench behind her hrrumphed for attention, then said, with a booming voice, "All-Father, my people are comfortable. We make the best of what we have. If this war of yours goes against us, we could lose everything."

Wednesday said, "You have already lost everything. I am offering you the chance to take something back."

The fire blazed high as he spoke, illuminating the faces of the audience.

I don't really believe, Shadow thought. I don't believe any of this. Maybe I'm still fifteen. Mom's still alive and I haven't even met Laura yet. Everything that's happened so far has been some kind of especially vivid dream. And yet he could not believe that either. All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end. Then the fire burned out, and there was darkness in Valaskjalf, Odin's Hall.

"Now what?" whispered Shadow.

"Now we go back to the carousel room," muttered Mr. Nancy. "And old One-Eye buys us all dinner, greases some palms, kisses some babies, and no one says the gee-word anymore."

"Gee-word?"

"Gods. What were you doin' the day they handed out brains, boy, anyway?"

"Someone was telling a story about stealing a tiger's balls, and I had to stop and find out how it ended."

Mr. Nancy chuckled.

"But nothing was resolved. Nobody agreed to anything."

"He's workin' them slowly. He'll land 'em one at a time. You'll see. They'll come around in the end."

Shadow could feel that a wind was coming up from somewhere, stirring his hair, touching his face, pulling at him.

They were standing in the room of the biggest carousel in the world, listening to the "Emperor Waltz."

There was a group of people, tourists by the look of them, talking with Wednesday over at the other side of the room, as many people as there had been shadowy figures in Wednesday's hall. "Through here," boomed Wednesday, and he led them through the only exit, formed to look like the gaping mouth of a huge monster, its sharp teeth ready to rend them all to slivers. He moved among them like a politician, cajoling, encouraging, smiling, gently disagreeing, pacifying.

"Did that happen?" asked Shadow.

"Did what happen, shit-for-brains?" asked Mr. Nancy.

"The hall. The fire. Tiger balls. Riding the carousel."

"Heck, nobody's allowed to ride the carousel. Didn't you see the signs? Now hush."

The monster's mouth led to the Organ Room, which puzzled Shadow-hadn't they already come through that way?

It was no less strange the second time. Wednesday led them all up some stairs, past life-sized models of the four horsemen of the apocalypse hanging from the ceiling, and they followed the signs to an early exit.

Shadow and Nancy brought up the rear. And then they were out of the House on the Rock, walking past the gift store and heading back into the parking lot.

"Pity we had to leave before the end," said Mr. Nancy. "I was kind of hoping to see the biggest artificial orchestra in the whole world."

"I've seen it," said Czernobog. "It's not so much."

***

The restaurant was ten minutes up the road. Wednesday had told each of his guests that tonight's dinner was on him, and had organized rides to the restaurant for any of them who didn't have their own transportation.

Shadow wondered how they had gotten to the House on the Rock in the first place, without their own transportation, and how they were going to get away again, but he said nothing. It seemed the smartest thing to say.

Shadow had a carful of Wednesday's guests to ferry to the restaurant: the woman in the red sari sat in the front seat beside him. There were two men in the backseat: the squat, peculiar-looking young man whose name Shadow had not properly caught, but which sounded like Elvis and another man, in a dark suit, who Shadow could not remember.

He had stood beside the man as he got into the car, had opened and closed the door for him, and was unable to remember anything about him. He turned around in the driver's seat and looked at him, carefully noting his face, his hair, his clothes, making certain he would know him if he met him again, and turned back to start the car, to find that the man had slipped from his mind. An impression of wealth was left behind, but nothing more.

I'm tired, thought Shadow. He glanced to his right and snuck a glance at the Indian woman. He noted the tiny silver necklace of skulls that circled her neck; her charm bracelet of heads and hands that jangled, like tiny bells, when she moved; the dark blue jewel on her forehead. She smelled of spices, of cardamom and nutmeg and flowers. Her hair was pepper-and-salt, and she smiled when she saw him look at her.

"You call me Mama-ji," she said.

"I am Shadow, Mama-ji," said Shadow.

"And what do you think of your employer's plans, Mister Shadow?"

He slowed, as a large black truck sped past, overtaking them with a spray of slush. "I don't ask, he don't tell," he said.

"If you ask me, he wants a last stand. He wants us to go out in a blaze of glory. That's what he wants. And we are old enough, or stupid enough, that maybe some of us will say yes."

"It's not my job to ask questions, Mama-ji," said Shadow. The inside of the car filled with her tinkling laughter.

The man in the backseat-not the peculiar-looking young man, the other one-said something, and Shadow replied to him, but a moment later he was damned if he could remember what had been said.

The peculiar-looking young man had said nothing, but now he started to hum to himself, a deep, melodic bass humming that made the interior of the car vibrate and rattle and buzz.

The peculiar-looking man was of average height, but of an odd shape: Shadow had heard of men who were barrel-chested before, but had no image to accompany the metaphor. This man was barrel-chested, and he had legs like, yes, like tree trunks, and hands like, exactly, ham hocks. He wore a black parka with a hood, several sweaters, thick dungarees, and, incongruously, in the winter and with those clothes, a pair of white tennis shoes, which were the same size and shape as shoeboxes. His fingers resembled sausages, with flat, squared-off fingertips.

"That's some hum you got," said Shadow from the driver's seat.

"Sorry," said the peculiar young man, in a deep, deep voice, embarrassed. He stopped humming.

"No, I enjoyed it," said Shadow. "Don't stop."

The peculiar young man hesitated, then commenced to hum once more, his voice as deep and reverberant as before. This time there were words interspersed in the humming. "Down down down," he sang, so deeply that the windows rattled. "Down down down, down down, down down."

Christmas lights were draped across the eaves of every house and building that they drove past. They ranged from discreet golden lights that dripped twinkles to giant displays of snowmen and teddy bears and multicolored stars.

Shadow pulled up at the restaurant, a big, barnlike structure, and he let his passengers off by the front door. He drove the car to the back of the parking lot. He wanted to make the short walk back to the restaurant alone, in the cold, to clear his head.

He parked the car beside a black truck. He wondered if it was the same one that had sped past him earlier. He closed the car door, and stood there in the parking lot, his breath steaming.

Inside the restaurant, Shadow could imagine Wednesday already sitting all his guests down around a big table, working the room. Shadow wondered whether he had really had Kali in the front of his car, wondered what he had been driving in the back...

"Hey bud, you got a match?" said a voice that was half familiar, and Shadow turned to apologize and say no, he didn't, but the gun barrel hit him over the left eye, and he started to fall. He put out an arm to steady himself as he went down. Someone pushed something soft into his mouth, to stop him from crying out, and taped it into position: easy, practiced moves, like a butcher gutting a chicken.

Shadow tried to shout, to warn Wednesday, to warn them all, but nothing came out of his mouth but a muffled noise.

"The quarry are all inside," said the half-familiar voice. "Everyone in position?" A crackle of a voice, half audible through a radio. "Let's move in and round them all up."

"What about the big guy?" said another voice.

"Package him up, take him out," said the first voice.

They put a baglike hood over Shadow's head, and bound his wrists and ankles with tape, and put him in the back of a truck, and drove him away.

***

There were no windows in the tiny room in which they had locked Shadow. There was a plastic chair, a lightweight folding table, and a bucket with a cover on it, which served Shadow as a makeshift toilet. There was also a six-foot-long strip of yellow foam on the floor, and a thin blanket with a long-since-crusted brown stain in the center: blood or shit or food, Shadow didn't know, and didn't care to investigate. There was a naked bulb behind a metal grille high in the room, but no light switch that Shadow had been able to find. The light was always on. There was no door handle on his side of the door.

He was hungry.

The first thing he had done, when the spooks had pushed him into the room, after they'd ripped off the tape from his ankles and wrists and mouth and left him alone, was to walk around the room and inspect it, carefully. He tapped the walls. They sounded dully metallic. There was a small ventilation grid at the top of the room. The door was soundly locked.

He was bleeding above the left eyebrow in a slow ooze. His head ached.

The floor was uncarpeted. He tapped it. It was made of the same metal as the walls. He took the top off the bucket, pissed in it, and covered it once more. According to his watch only four hours had passed since the raid on the restaurant.

His wallet was gone, but they had left him his coins.

He sat on the chair, at the card table. The table was covered with a cigarette-burned green baize. Shadow practiced appearing to push coins through the table. Then he took two quarters and made up a Pointless Coin Trick.

He concealed a quarter in his right palm, and openly displayed the other quarter in his left hand, between finger and thumb. Then he appeared to take the quarter from his left hand, while actually letting it drop back into his left hand. He opened his right hand to display the quarter that had been there all along.

The thing about coin manipulation was that it took all Shadow's head to do it; or rather, he could not do it if he was angry or upset, so the action of practicing an illusion, even one with, on its own, no possible use-for he had expended an enormous amount of effort and skill to make it appear that he had moved a quarter from one hand to the other, something that it takes no skill whatever to do for real-calmed him, cleared his mind of turmoil and fear.

He began a trick even more pointless: a one-handed half-dollar-to-penny transformation, but with his two quarters. Each of the coins was alternately concealed and revealed as the trick progressed: he began with one quarter visible, the other hidden. He raised his hand to his mouth and blew on the visible coin, while slipping it into a classic palm, as the first two fingers took the hidden quarter out and presented it. The effect was that he displayed a quarter in his hand, raised it to his mouth, blew on it, and lowered it again, displaying the same quarter all the while.

He did it over and over and over again.

He wondered if they were going to kill him, and his hand trembled, just a little, and one of the quarters dropped from his fingertip onto the stained green baize of the card table. And then, because he just couldn't do it anymore, he put the coins away, and took out the Liberty-head dollar that Zorya Polunochnaya had given him, and held onto it tightly, and waited.

***

At three in the morning, by his watch, the spooks returned to interrogate him. Two men in dark suits, with dark hair and shiny black shoes. Spooks. One was square-jawed, wide-shouldered, had great hair, looked like he had played football in high school, badly bitten fingernails; the other had a receding hairline, silver-rimmed round glasses, manicured nails. While they looked nothing alike, Shadow found himself suspecting that on some level, possibly cellular, the two men were identical. They stood on each side of the card table, looking down at him.

"How long have you been working for Cargo, sir?" asked one.

"I don't know what that is," said Shadow.

"He calls himself Wednesday. Grimm. Olfather. Old guy. You've been seen with him, sir."

"I've been working for him for a couple of days."

"Don't lie to us, sir," said the spook with the glasses.

"Okay," said Shadow. "I won't. But it's still a couple of days."

The square-jawed spook reached down and twisted Shadow's ear between finger and thumb. He squeezed as he twisted. The pain was intense. "We told you not to lie to us, sir," he said, mildly. Then he let go.

Each of the spooks had a gun bulge under his jacket. Shadow did not try to retaliate. He pretended he was back in prison. Do your own time, thought Shadow. Don't tell them anything they don't know already. Don't ask questions.

"These are dangerous people you're palling around with, sir," said the spook with glasses. "You will be doing your country a service by turning state's evidence." He smiled, sympathetically: I'm the good cop, said the smile.

"I see," said Shadow.

"And if you don't want to help us, sir," said the square-jawed spook, "you can see what we're like when we're not happy." He hit Shadow an openhanded blow across the stomach, knocking the breath from him. It wasn't torture, Shadow thought, just punctuation: I'm the bad cop. He retched.

"I would like to make you happy," said Shadow, as soon as he could speak.

"All we ask is your cooperation, sir."

"Can I ask..." gasped Shadow (don't ask questions, he thought, but it was too late, the words were already spoken), "can I ask who I'll be cooperating with?"

"You want us to tell you our names?" asked the square-jawed spook. "You have to be out of your mind."

"No, he's got a point," said the spook with glasses. "It may make it easier for him to relate to us." He looked at Shadow and smiled like a man advertising toothpaste. "Hi. I'm Mister Stone, sir. My colleague is Mister Wood."

"Actually," said Shadow, "I meant, what agency are you with? CIA? FBI?"

Stone shook his head. "Gee. It's not as" easy as that anymore, sir. Things just aren't that simple."

"The private sector," said Wood, "the public sector. You know. There's a lot of interplay these days."

"But I can assure you," said Stone, with another smiley smile, "we are the good guys. Are you hungry, sir?" He reached into a pocket of his jacket, pulled out a Snickers bar. "Here. A gift."

"Thanks," said Shadow. He unwrapped the Snickers bar and ate it.

"I guess you'd like something to drink with that. Coffee? Beer?"

"Water, please," said Shadow.

Stone walked to the door, knocked on it. He said something to the guard on the other side of the door, who nodded and returned a minute later with a polystyrene cup filled with cold water.

"CIA," said Wood. He shook his head, ruefully. "Those bozos. Hey, Stone. I heard a new CIA joke. Okay: how can we be sure the CIA wasn't involved in the Kennedy assassination?"

"I don't know," said Stone. "How can we be sure?"

"He's dead, isn't he?" said Wood.

They both laughed.

"Feeling better now, sir?" asked Stone.

"I guess."

"So why don't you tell us what happened this evening, sir?"

"We did some tourist stuff. Went to the House on the Rock. Went out for some food. You know the rest."

Stone sighed, heavily. Wood shook his head, as if disappointed, and kicked Shadow in the kneecap. The pain was excruciating. Then Wood pushed a fist slowly into Shadow's back, just above the right kidney, and knuckled it, hard, and the pain was worse than the pain in Shadow's knee.

I'm bigger than either of them, he thought. I can take them. But they were armed; and even if he-somehow-killed or subdued them both, he'd still be locked in the cell with them. (But he'd have a gun. He'd have two guns.) (No.)

Wood was keeping his hands away from Shadow's face. No marks. Nothing permanent: just fists and feet on his torso and knees. It hurt, and Shadow clutched the Liberty dollar tight in the palm of his hand, and waited for it to be over.

And after far too long a time the beating ended.

"We'll see you in a couple of hours, sir," said Stone.

"You know, Woody really hated to have to do that. We're reasonable men. Like I said, we are the good guys. You're on the wrong side. Meantime, why don't you try to get a little sleep?"

"You better start taking us seriously," said Wood.

"Woody's got a point there, sir," said Stone. "Think about it."

The door slammed closed behind them. Shadow wondered if they would turn out the light, but they didn't, and it blazed into the room like a cold eye. Shadow crawled across the floor to the yellow foam-rubber pad and climbed onto it, pulling the thin blanket over himself, and he closed his eyes, and he held onto nothing, and he held onto dreams.

Time passed.

He was fifteen again, and his mother was dying, and she was trying to tell him something very important, and he couldn't understand her. He moved in his sleep and a shaft of pain moved him from half-sleep to half-waking, and he winced.

Shadow shivered under the thin blanket. His right arm covered his eyes, blocking out the light of the bulb. He wondered whether Wednesday and the others were still at liberty, if they were even still alive. He hoped that they were.

The silver dollar remained cold in his left hand. He could feel it there, as it had been during the beating. He wondered idly why it did not warm to his body temperature. Half asleep, now, and half delirious, the coin, and the idea of Liberty, and the moon, and Zorya Polunochnaya somehow became intertwined in one woven beam of silver light that shone from the depths to the heavens, and he rode the silver beam up and away from the pain and the heartache and the fear, away from the pain and, blessedly, back into dreams.

From far away he could hear some kind of noise, but it was too late to think about it: he belonged to sleep now. A half-thought: he hoped it was not people coming to wake him up, to hit him or to shout at him. And then, he noticed with pleasure, he was really asleep, and no longer cold.

***

Somebody somewhere was calling for help, loudly, in his dream or out of it.

Shadow rolled over on the foam rubber, in his sleep, finding new places that hurt as he rolled.

Someone was shaking his shoulder.

He wanted to ask them not to wake him, to let him sleep and leave him be, but it came out as a grunt.

"Puppy?" said Laura. "You have to wake up. Please wake up, hon."

And there was a moment's gentle relief. He had had such a strange dream, of prisons and con men and down-at-heel gods, and now Laura was waking him to tell him it was time for work, and perhaps there would be time enough before work to steal some coffee and a kiss, or more than a kiss; and he put out his hand to touch her.

Her flesh was cold as ice, and sticky.

Shadow opened his eyes.

"Where did all the blood come from?" he asked.

"Other people," she said. "It's not mine. I'm filled with formaldehyde, mixed with glycerin and lanolin."

"Which other people?" he asked.

"The guards," she said. "It's okay. I killed them. You better move. I don't think I gave anyone a chance to raise the alarm. Take a coat from out there, or you'll freeze your butt off."

"You killed them?"

She shrugged, and half smiled, awkwardly. Her hands looked as if she had been finger-painting, composing a picture that had been executed solely in crimsons, and there were splashes and spatters on her face and clothes (the same blue suit in which she had been buried) that made Shadow think of Jackson Pollock, because it was less problematic to think of Jackson Pollock than to accept the alternative.

"It's easier to kill people, when you're dead yourself," she told him. "I mean, it's not such a big deal. You're not so prejudiced anymore."

"It's still a big deal to me," said Shadow.

"You want to stay here until the morning crew comes?" she said. "You can if you like. I thought you'd like to get out of here."

"They'll think I did it," he said, stupidly.

"Maybe," she said. "Put on a coat, hon. You'll freeze."

He walked out into the corridor. At the end of the corridor was a guardroom. In the guardroom were four dead men: three guards, and the man who had called himself Stone. His friend was nowhere to be seen. From the blood-colored skid marks on the floor, two of them had been dragged into the guardroom and dropped onto the floor.

His own coat was hanging from the coat rack. His wallet was still in the inside pocket, apparently untouched. Laura pulled open a couple of cardboard boxes filled with candy bars.

The guards, now he could see them properly, were wearing dark camouflage uniforms, but there were no official tags on them, nothing to say who they, were working for. They might have been weekend duck hunters, dressed for the shoot.

Laura reached out her cold hand and squeezed Shadow's hand in hers. She had the gold coin he had given her around her neck, on a golden chain.

"That looks nice," he said.

"Thanks." She smiled, prettily.

"What about the others," he asked. "Wednesday, and the rest of them? Where are they?" Laura passed him a handful of candy bars, and he filled his pockets with them.

"There wasn't anybody else here. A lot of empty cells, and one with you in it. Oh, and one of the men had gone into the cell down there to jack off with a magazine. He got such a shock."

"You killed him while he was jerking himself off?"

She shrugged. "I guess," she said, uncomfortably. "I was worried they were hurting you. Someone has to watch out for you, and I told you I would, didn't I? Here, take these." They were chemical hand and foot warmers: thin pads-you broke the seal and they heated up and stayed that way for hours. Shadow pocketed them.

"Look out for me? Yes," he said, "you did."

She reached out a finger, stroked him above his left eyebrow. "You're hurt," she said.

"I'm okay," he said.

He opened a metal door in the wall. It swung open slowly. There was a four-foot drop to the ground, and he swung himself down to what felt like gravel. He picked up Laura by the waist, swung her down, as he used to swing her, easily, without a second thought....

The moon came out from behind a thick cloud. It was low on the horizon, ready to set, but the light it cast onto the snow was enough to see by.

They had emerged from what turned out to be the black-painted metal car of a long freight train, parked or abandoned in a woodland siding. The series of wagon cars went on as far as he could see, into the trees and away. He had been on a train. He should have known.

"How the hell did you find me here?" he asked his dead wife.

She shook her head slowly, amused. "You shine like a beacon in a dark world," she told him. "It wasn't that hard. Now, just go. Go as far and as fast as you can. Don't use your credit cards and you should be fine."

"Where should I go?"

She pushed a hand through her matted hair, flicking it back out of her eyes. "The road's that way," she told him. "Do whatever you can. Steal a car if you have to. Go south."

"Laura," he said, and hesitated. "Do you know what's going on? Do you know who these people are? Who you killed?"

"Yeah," she said. "I think I do know."

"I owe you," said Shadow. "I'd still be in there if it wasn't for you. I don't think they had anything good planned for me."

"No," she said. "I don't think they did."

They walked away from the empty train cars. Shadow wondered about the other trains he'd seen, blank window-less metal cars that went on for mile after mile, hooting their lonely way through the night. His fingers closed around the Liberty dollar in his pocket, and he remembered Zorya Polunochnaya, and the way she had looked at him in the moonlight. Did you ask her what she wanted? It is the wisest thing to ask the dead. Sometimes they will tell you.

"Laura...What do you want?" he asked.

"You really want to know?"

"Yes. Please."

Laura looked up at him with dead blue eyes. "I want to be alive again," she said. "Not in this half-life, I want to be really alive. I want to feel my heart pumping in my chest again. I want to feel blood moving through me-hot, and salty, and real. It's weird, you don't think you can feel it, the blood, but believe me, when it stops flowing, you'll know." She rubbed her eyes, smudging her face with red from the mess on her hands. "Look, it's hard. You know why dead people only go out at night, puppy? Because it's easier to pass for real, in the dark. And I don't want to have to pass. I want to be alive."

"I don't understand what you want me to do."

"Make it happen, hon. You'll figure it out. I know you will."

"Okay," he said. "I'll try. And if I do figure it out, how do I find you?"

But she was gone, and there was nothing left in the woodland but a gentle gray in the sky to show him where east was, and on the bitter December wind a lonely wail that might have been the cry of the last nightbird or the call of the first bird of dawn.

Shadow set his face to the south, and he began to walk.