Breer had been unrelentingly thorough in his destruction, eradicating the European as 
best his machete and failing hands would allow. But it had not been enough. There was too 
much stolen life buzzing in Mamoulian's cells; it roared on, in contravention of any sane 
law, unquenchable.
    For all his vehemence the Razor-Eater had not finished the European's life, merely 
subdivided it, leaving it to describe these futile circles. And somewhere in this 
lunatic's menagerie was a beast with a will, a fragment that still possessed sufficient 
sense to think itself-albeit stutteringly-into Carys" mind. Perhaps not one piece, 
perhaps many-a sum of these wandering parts. Marty wasn't interested in its biology. How 
this obscenity survived was a matter for a madhouse debating society.
    He backed out of the room and stood, shivering in the hall. Wind gusted against the 
window; the glass complained. He listened to the gusts while he worked out what to do 
next. Down the corridor a piece of filth fell from the wall. He watched it struggle to 
turn itself over, and then begin the slow ascent again. Just beyond the spot where it 
labored lay Whitehead. Marty went back to the body.
    Charmaine's killers had enjoyed themselves mightily before they left: Whitehead's 
trousers and underwear had been pulled down, and his groin scrawled on with a knife. His 
eyes were open; his false teeth had been removed. He stared at Marty, jaw sagging like a 
delinquent child. Flies crawled on him; there were patches of decay on his face. But he 
was dead: which in this world was something. The boys had, as a final insult, defecated 
on his chest. Flies gathered there too.
    In his time Marty had hated this man; loved him too, if only for a day; called him 
Papa, called him bastard; made love to his daughter and thought himself King of Creation. 
He'd seen the man in power: a lord. Seen him afraid too: scrabbling for escape like a rat 
in a fire. He'd seen the old man's odd species of integrity in practice, and found it 
workable. As fruitful, perhaps, as the affections of more loving men.
    He reached across to seal off the stare, but in their zeal the evangelists had cut 
off Whitehead's lids, and Marty's fingers instead touched the slick of his eyeball. Not 
tears that wetted it, but rot. He grimaced; withdrew his hand, sickened.
    Just to shut off the look on Papa's face he thrust his fingers under the corpse to 
heave it onto its belly. The body fluids had settled, and his underside was damp and 
sticky. Gritting his teeth he rolled the man's bulk onto its side, and let gravity pull 
it over. Now at least the old man didn't have to watch what followed.
    Marty stood up. His hands stank. He baptized them liberally with the rest of the 
Scotch, to cancel the smell. The libation served another purpose: it removed the 
temptation of the drink. It would be too easy to become muzzy and lose focus on the 
problem. The enemy was here. It had to be dealt with; put away forever.
    He began where he was, in the hall, digging his heels into the pieces of flesh that 
crawled around Whitehead's body, squashing their stolen life out as best he could. They 
made no sound, of course, which made the task simpler. They were just worms, he told 
himself, dumb slivers of mindless life. And it became yet easier as he went up and down 
the corridor grinding the meat into smears of yellow fat and brown muscle. The beasts 
succumbed without argument. He began to sweat, working out his revulsion on this human 
refuse, eyes darting everywhere to make sure he caught each wretched scrap. He felt a 
smile twitch at the corners of his mouth-now a low laugh, quite without humor, escaped. 
It was an easy decimation. He was a boy again, killing ants with his thumbs. One! Two! 
Three! Only these things were slower than the most laden ant, and he could stamp them 
down at a leisurely pace. All the power and wisdom of the European had come to this muck, 
and he-Marty Strauss-had been elected to play the God-game, and wipe it away. He had 
gained, at the last, a terrible authority.
    Nothing is essential. The words he'd heard-and spoken-in Caliban Street at last made 
absolute sense. Here was the European, proving the bitter syllogism with his own flesh 
and bone.
    When he'd finished his work in the hallway he returned to the main room and began his 
labors there, his initial revulsion at touching the flesh dwindling, until with time he 
was snatching pieces from their perches on the wall and flinging them down to be ground 
out. When he'd done in the gaming room he went to scour the landing and stairs. Finally, 
when all was still, he returned to the suite and made a bonfire of the curtains from the 
dressing room, fueled by the table the old man had played cards on, and tindered by the 
cards themselves, and then went around the room kicking the larger pieces of flesh into 
the fire, where they spat and curled and were presently consumed. The smaller pieces he 
scraped up, the laugh still coming intermittently as he flung little rains of meat into 
the middle of the conflagration. The room rapidly filled with smoke and heat, neither 
having any escape route. His heart began to pound loudly in his ears; his arms shone with 
sweat. It was a long job, and he had to be meticulous, didn't he? He mustn't leave a 
living speck, not a fragment, for fear it live on, become mythical-grow perhaps-and find 
him.
    When the fire died down he fed it the pillows, the records and the paperback books 
until there was nothing left to burn but himself. There were moments, as he gazed 
entranced into the flames, that the thought of stepping into the fire was not 
unattractive. But he resisted. It was only exhaustion tempting him. Instead he crouched 
in a corner, watching the play of flame-light on the wall. The patterns made him cry; or 
at least something did.
    
    When, some time before dawn, Carys came up the stairs to claim him from his reverie, 
he neither heard nor saw her. The fire had long since died down. Only the bones, 
shattered by Breer's dismembering, and blackened and cracked in the fire, were still 
recognizable. Shards of thighbone, of vertebrae; the saucer of the European's skull.
    She crept in as if fearful of waking a sleeping child. Maybe he had been sleeping. 
There were feathery images in his head that could only have been dreams: life was not 
that terrible.
    "I woke," she said. "I knew you'd be here." He could barely see her through the grimy 
air; she was a chalk drawing on black paper: so vulnerable to smudging. The tears came 
again when he thought of that.
    "We must go," she said, not wishing to press him for explanations. Perhaps she would 
ask him in time, when the plaintive look had left his eyes; perhaps she would never ask. 
After several minutes of her coaxing him and pressing close to him, he slid up from his 
knee-hugging meditation and conceded to her care.
    When they stepped out of the hotel the wind buffeted them, as antagonistic as ever. 
Marty looked up to see if the gusts had blown the stars off course, but they were 
steadfast. Everything was in its place, despite the insanity that had mauled their lives 
of late, and though she hurried him on, he dawdled, his head back, squinting at the 
stars. There were no revelations to be had there. Just pinpricks of light in a plain 
heaven. But he saw for the first time how fine that was. That in a world too full of loss 
and rage they be remote: the minimum of glory. As she led him across the lightless 
ground, time and again he could not prevent his gaze from straying skyward.