"Long enough," Marty replied.-He wasn't going to try to hide anything; there was no 
sense in that. He waited for the next inevitable question: what were you in for? But it 
didn't come. Luther turned his attention back to the business of the road, apparently 
satisfied. Marty was happy to let the conversation drop. All he wanted to do was watch 
this brave new world go by, and drink it all in. The people, the shopfronts, the 
advertisements, he had a hunger for all the details, no matter how trivial. He glued his 
eyes to the window. There was so much to see, and yet he had the distinct impression that 
it was all artificial, as though the people in the street, in the other cars, were 
actors, all cast to type and playing their parts immaculately. His mind, struggling to 
accommodate the welter of information-on every side a new vista, at every corner a 
different parade passing-simply rejected their reality. It was all stage-managed, his 
brain told him, all a fiction. Because look, these people behaved as though they'd lived 
without him, as though the world had gone on while he'd been locked away, and some 
childlike part of him-the part that, hiding its eyes, believes itself hidden-could not 
conceive of a life for anyone without him to see it.
    His common sense told him otherwise, of course. Whatever his confused senses might 
suspect, the world was older, and more weary probably, since he and it had last met. He 
would have to renew his acquaintance with it: learn how its nature had changed; learn 
again its etiquette, its touchiness, its potential for pleasure.
    They crossed the river via the Wandsworth Bridge and drove through Earl's Court and 
Shepherd's Bush onto Westway. It was the middle of a Friday afternoon, and the traffic 
was heavy; commuters eager to be home for the weekend. He stared blatantly at the faces 
of the drivers in the cars they overtook, guessing occupations, or trying to catch the 
eyes of the women.
    Mile by mile, the strangeness he'd felt initially began to wear off, and by the time 
they reached the M40 he was starting to tire of the spectacle. Toy had nodded off in his 
corner of the back seat, his hands in his lap. Luther was occupied with leapfrogging down 
the highway.
    Only one event stowed their progress. Twenty miles short of Oxford blue lights 
flashed on the road up ahead, and the sound of a siren speeding toward them from behind 
announced an accident. The procession of cars slowed, like a line of mourners pausing to 
glance into a coffin.
    A car had slewed across the eastbound lanes, crossed the divide, and met, head-on, a 
van coming in the opposite direction. All of the westbound lanes were blocked, either by 
wreckage or by police cars, and the travelers were obliged to use the shoulder to skirt 
the scattered wreckage. "What's happened; can you see?" Luther asked, his attention too 
occupied by navigating past the signaling policeman for him to see for himself. Marty 
described the scene as best he could.
    A man, with blood streaming down his face as if somebody had cracked a blood-yolked 
egg on his head, was standing in the middle of the chaos, hypnotized by shock. Behind him 
a group-police and rescued passengers alike-gathered around the concertinaed front 
section of the car to speak to somebody trapped in the driver's seat. The figure was 
slumped, motionless. As they crept past, one of these comforters, her coat soaked either 
with her own blood or that of the driver, turned away from the vehicle and began to 
applaud. At least that was how Marty interpreted the slapping together of her hands: as 
applause. It was as if she were suffering the same delusion he'd tasted so recently-that 
this was all some meticulous but distasteful illusion-and at any moment it would all come 
to a welcome end. He wanted to lean out of the car window and tell her that she was 
wrong; that this was the real world-long-legged women, crystal sky and all. But she'd 
know that tomorrow, wouldn't she? Plenty of time for grief then. But for now she clapped, 
and she was still clapping when the accident slid out of sight behind them.
    
    
    II The Fox
    
    10
    Asylum, Whitehead knew, was a traitorous word. In one breath it meant a sanctuary, a 
place of refuge, of safety. In another, its meaning twisted on itself: asylum came to 
mean a madhouse, a hole for broken minds to bury themselves in. It was, he reminded 
himself, a semantic trick, no more. Why then did the ambiguity run in his head so often?
    He sat in that too-comfortable chair beside the window where he had sat now for a 
season of evenings watching the night begin to skulk across the lawn and thinking, 
without much shape to his ruminations, about how one thing became another; about how 
difficult it was to hold on to anything. Life was a random business. Whitehead had 
learned that lesson years ago, at the hands of a master, and he had never forgotten it. 
Whether you were rewarded for your good works or skinned alive, it was all down to 
chance. No use to cleave to some system of numbers or divinities; they all crumbled in 
the end. Fortune belonged to the man who was willing to risk everything on a single throw.
    He'd done that. Not once, but many times at the beginning of his career, when he was 
still laying the foundations of his empire. And thanks to that extraordinary sixth sense 
he possessed, the ability to preempt the roll of the dice, the risks had almost always 
paid off. Other corporations had their virtuosi: computers that calculated the odds to 
the tenth place, advisers who kept their ears pressed to the stock markets of Tokyo, 
London and New York, but they were all overshadowed by Whitehead's instinct. When it came 
to knowing the moment, for sensing the collision of time and opportunity that made a good 
decision into a great one, a commonplace takeover into a coup, nobody was Old Man 
Whitehead's superior, and all the smart young men in the corporation's boardrooms knew 
that. Joe's oracular advice still had to be sought before any significant expansion was 
undertaken or contract signed.
    He guessed this authority, which remained absolute, was resented in some circles. No 
doubt there were those who thought he should let go his hold completely and leave the 
university men and their computers to get on with business. But Whitehead had won these 
skills, these unique powers of second-guessing, at some hazard; foolish then that they 
lie forgotten when they could be used to lay a finger on the wheel. Besides, the old man 
had an argument the young turks could never gainsay: his methods worked. He'd never been 
properly schooled; his life before fame was-much to the journalists" dismay-a blank, but 
he had made the Whitehead Corporation out of nothing. Its fate, for better or worse, was 
still his passionate concern.
    There was no room for passion tonight, however, sitting in that chair (a chair to die 
in, he'd sometimes thought) beside the window. Tonight there was only unease: that old 
man's complaint.
    How he loathed age! It was hardly bearable to be so reduced. Not that he was infirm; 
just that a dozen minor ailments conspired against his comfort so that seldom a day 
passed without some irritation-an ulcerous mouth, or a chafing between the buttocks that 
itched furiously-fixing his attentions in the body when the urge to self-preservation 
called them elsewhere. The curse of age, he'd decided, was distraction, and he couldn't 
afford the luxury of negligent thinking. There was danger in contemplating itch and 
ulcer. As soon as his mind was turned, something would take out his throat. That was what 
the unease was telling him. Don't look away for a moment; don't think you're safe 
because, old man, I've a message for you: the worst is yet to come.