fleetingly. And he had the evidence. Signs and codes; the Medallion of the Shoal, falling 
into his hands. A moment later he had his knife buried in Homer's head, and he was away, 
with only a parcel of clues, on a trip that had taken him, growing more powerful with 
every step, to Los Alamos, and the Loop, and finally to the Mision de Santa Catrina.
  And still he didn't know why he'd been made, but he'd accrued enough in his four 
decades for the Nuncio to give him a temporary answer. For rage's sake. For revenge's 
sake. For the having of power and the using of power.
  Momentarily he hovered over the scene, and saw himself on the floor below, curled round 
in a litter of glass, clutching at his skull as though to keep it from splitting. 
Fletcher moved into view. He seemed to be haranguing the body, but Jaffe couldn't hear 
the words. Some self-righteous speech, no doubt, on the frailty of human endeavor. 
Suddenly he rushed at the body, his arms raised, and brought his fists down upon it. It 
came apart, like the portrait at the window. Jaffe howled as his dislocated spirit was 
claimed for the substance on the floor, drawn down into his Nunciate anatomy.
  He opened his eyes and looked up at the man who'd struck off his crust, seeing Fletcher 
with new comprehension.
  From the beginning they'd been an uneasy partnership, the fundamental principles of 
which had confounded both. But now Jaffe saw the mechanism clearly. Each was the other's 
nemesis. No two entities on earth were so perfectly opposed. Fletcher loving light as 
only a man in terror of ignorance could; one eye gone from looking at the sun's face. He 
was no longer Randolph Jaffe, but the Jaff, the one and only, in love with the dark where 
his rage had found its sustenance and its expression. The dark where sleep came, and the 
trip to the dream-sea beyond sleep began. Painful as the Nuncio's education had been, it 
was good to be reminded of what he was. More than reminded, magnified through the glass 
of his own history. Not in the dark now, but of it, capable of using the Art. His hand 
already itched to do so. And with the itch came a grasp of how to snatch the veil aside 
and enter Quiddity. He didn't need ritual. He didn't need suits or sacrifices. He was an 
evolved soul. His need could not be denied, and he had need in abundance.
  But in reaching this new self he had accidentally created a force that would, if he 
didn't stop here and now, oppose him every step of the way. He got to his feet, not 
needing to hear a challenge from Fletcher's lips to know that the enmity between them was 
perfectly understood. He read the revulsion in the flame that flared behind his enemy's 
eye. The genius sauvage, the dope-fiend and Pollyanna Fletcher had been dissolved and 
reconstructed: joyless, dreamy and bright. Minutes ago he'd been ready to sit by the 
window, longing to be sky, until longing or death did its work. But not now.
  "I see the whole thing," he announced, choosing to use his voice-box now that they were 
equal and opposite. "You tempted me to raise you up, so you could steal your way to 
revelation."
  "And I will," the Jaff replied. "I'm halfway there already."
  "Quiddity won't open to the likes of you."
  "It'll have no choice," the Jaff replied. "I'm inevitable now." He raised his hand. 
Beads of power, like tiny ballbearings, came sweating from it. "You see?" he said, "I'm 
an Artist."
  "Not till you use the Art you're not."
  "And who's going to stop me? You?"
  "I've got no choice. I'm responsible."
  "How? I beat you to a pulp once. I'll do it again."
  "I'll raise visions to oppose you."
  "You can try." A question came into the Jaff mind as he spoke, which Fletcher had begun 
to answer before the other had even voiced it.
  "Why did I touch your body? I don't know. It demanded I did. I kept trying to shout it 
down, but it called."
  He paused, then said:
  "Maybe opposites attract, even in our condition."
  "Then the sooner you're dead, the better," the Jaff said, and reached to tear out his 
enemy's throat.
  In the darkness that was creeping over the Mission from the Pacific, Raul heard the 
first din of battle begin. He knew from echoes in his own Nunciate system that the 
distillation had been at work behind the walls. His father, Fletcher, had gone out of his 
own life and into something new. So had the other man, the one he'd always distrusted, 
even when words like evil were just sounds from a human palate. He understood them now; 
or at least put them together with his animal response to Jaffe: revulsion. The man was 
sick to his core, like fruit full of rot. To judge by the sound of violence from inside, 
Fletcher had decided to fight that corruption. The brief, sweet time he'd had with his 
father was over. There'd be no more lessons in civility; no more sitting together by the 
window, listening to "the sublime Mozart" and watching the clouds change shape.
  As the first stars appeared, the sounds from the Mission ceased. Raul waited, hoping 
that Jaffe had been destroyed, but fearing his father had gone too. After an hour in the 
cold he decided to venture inside. Wherever they'd gone- Heaven or Hell-he couldn't 
follow. The best he could do was put on his clothes, which he'd always despised wearing 
(they chafed and caged) but which were now a reminder of his master's tuition. He'd wear 
them always, so as not to forget the Good Man Fletcher.
  Reaching the door, he realized that the Mission had not been vacated. Fletcher was 
still there. So was his enemy. Both men still possessed bodies that resembled their 
former selves, but there was a change in them. Shapes hovered over each: a huge-headed 
infant, the color of smoke, over Jaffe; a cloud, with the sun somewhere in its cushion, 
over Fletcher. The men had their hands at each other's throats and eyes. Their subtle 
bodies were similarly intertwined. Perfectly matched, neither could gain victory.
  Raul's entrance broke the impasse. Fletcher turned, his one good eye focusing on the 
boy, and in that instant the Jaff took his advantage, flinging his enemy back across the 
room.
  "Out!" Fletcher yelled to Raul. "Get out!"
  Raul did as he was ordered, darting between the dying fires as he raced from the 
Mission, the ground trembling beneath his bare soles as new furies were unleashed behind 
him. He had three seconds' grace to fling himself a little way down the slope before the 
leeway side of the Mission-walls which had been built to survive until the end of 
faith-shattered before an eruption of energy. He didn't cover his eyes against it. 
Instead he watched, glimpsing the forms of Jaffe and the Good Man Fletcher, twin powers 
locked together in the same wind, fly out from the center of the blast over his head, and 
away into the night.
  The force of the explosion had scattered the bonfires. Hundreds of smaller fires now 
burned around the Mission. The roof had been almost entirely blown off. The walls bore 
gaping wounds.
  Lonely already, Raul limped back towards his only refuge.
  
  VI
  There was a war waged in America that year, perhaps the bitterest and certainly the 
strangest ever fought on, in or above its soil. For the most part it went unreported, 
because it went unnoticed. Or rather its consequences (which were many, and often 
traumatic) seemed so unlike the effects of battle they were consistently misinterpreted.