calculations were made, almost two weeks after the search began, forty-one of the town's 
members were unaccounted for. The earth had claimed them, then closed over their corpses. 
Or else the individuals in question had slipped away into the night, taking this 
opportunity to re-invent themselves and start afresh. One of the latter group, so rumor 
went, was William Witt, whose body was never recovered but whose house, upon 
investigation, was found to contain enough pornography to keep the Combat Zones of 
several cities supplied for months. He'd had a secret life, had William Witt, and the 
general suspicion was that he'd chosen to go and live it elsewhere.
  When the identity of one of the two corpses in the pet store was revealed to be that of 
Jim Hotchkiss one or two of the astuter journalists noted that his had been a life dogged 
by tragedy. His daughter, they reminded their readers, had been one of the so-called 
League of Virgins, and in remarking on this the writers took a paragraph to comment on 
just how much grief the Grove had endured in its short life. Had it been doomed from the 
outset, the more fanciful commentators asked, built on cursed ground? There was some 
shred of solace in that thought. If not, if the Grove had simply been a victim of chance, 
then how many of the thousands of such communities across America were vulnerable to the 
same outrages?
  On the second day of the search Joyce McGuire's body was found in the ruins of her 
house, which had sustained considerably worse damage than any of the surrounding 
property. It was taken for identification, as were the bulk of the bodies, to a makeshift 
mortuary in Thousand Oaks. That onerous duty fell to Jo-Beth, whose brother would be 
numbered among the missing forty-one. Identification made, arrangements were begun for 
her burial. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints looked after its own. Pastor 
John had survived the levelling (indeed he'd left the Grove the night of the Jaff's 
attack on the McGuire house and hadn't come back till the dust had settled) and it was he 
who organized Momma's funeral. Only once in that time did he and Howie cross paths, and 
Howie was quick to remind the Pastor of the night he'd blubbered beside the refrigerator. 
The Pastor insisted he remembered no such incident.
  "Pity I haven't got a photo," Howie said. "To jog your memory. But I've got one up 
here." He pointed to his temples, upon which the last traces of Quiddity's 
reconfiguration of his flesh was fading. "Just in case I ever get tempted."
  "Tempted to what?" the Pastor asked.
  "To be a believer."
  Momma McGuire was consigned into the embrace of her chosen God two days after that 
exchange. Howie didn't attend the ceremony, but was waiting for Jo-Beth when it was all 
over. They left for Chicago twenty-four hours later.
  Their part in events was very far from over, however. The first sign that the adventure 
of Cosm and Quiddity had made them part of a very select band of players came half a week 
after they'd got to Chicago, with the arrival on their doorstep of a tall, 
handsome-gone-to-harrowed stranger, dressed too lightly for the weather, who introduced 
himself as D'Amour.
  "I'd like to talk to you about what happened at Palomo Grove," he said to Howie.
  "How did you find us?"
  "It's my job, finding people," Harry explained. "You may have heard Tesla Bombeck 
mention me?"
  "No, I don't think so."
  "Well you can check with her."
  "No I can't," Howie reminded him. "She's dead."
  "So she is," D'Amour said. "So she is. My mistake."
  "And even if you did know her there's nothing Jo-Beth and me have to say. We just want 
to forget about the Grove."
  "There's not much chance of that," a voice from behind him observed. "Who is this, 
Howie?"
  "He says he knew Tesla."
  "D'Amour," the stranger said, "Harry D'Amour. I really would appreciate a few minutes 
of your time. Just a few. It's very important."
  Howie glanced at Jo-Beth.
  "Why not?" she said.
  "It's damn cold out there," D'Amour observed as he stepped inside. "What happened to 
summer?"
  "Things are bad all over," Jo-Beth said.
  "You noticed," D'Amour replied.
  "What are you two talking about?"
  "The news," she said. "I've been watching it, you haven't."
  "It's like a full moon every night," D'Amour said. "A lot of people are acting very 
strange. The suicide rate's doubled since the Grove Breakout. There's riots in asylums 
across the country. And I'd lay money we're only seeing a little part of the whole 
picture. There's a lot being kept under wraps."
  "Who by?"
  "The government. The church. Am I the first one to find you?"
  "Yes," said Howie. "Why? Do you think there's going to be others?"
  "For certain. You two are at the center of all this-"
  "It wasn't our fault!" Howie protested.
  "I'm not saying it was," D'Amour replied. "Please. I haven't come here to accuse you of 
anything. And I'm sure you deserve to be left in peace to get on with living. But it's 
not going to happen. That's the truth. You're "too important. You've seen too much. Our 
people know it, and so do theirs."
  "Theirs?" Jo-Beth said.
  "The Iad's people. The infiltrators who kept the army at bay when it looked like the 
Iad were about to break out."
  "How do you know so much about all this?" Howie wanted to know.
  "I have to be a little careful about my sources just at the moment, but I hope I can 
reveal them to you eventually."
  "You make it sound like we're in this with you," Howie said. "We're not. You're right, 
we do want to get on with living our lives, together. And we'll go wherever we have to- 
Europe, Australia, wherever-to do that."
  "They'll find you," D'Amour said. "The Grove brought them too close to succeeding for 
them to give up now. They know they've got us spooked. Quiddity's tainted. Nobody's going 
to have many sweet dreams from now on. We're easy meat, and they know it. You might want 
to live ordinary lives but you can't. Not with fathers like yours."
  It was Jo-Beth's turn to express shock at his words.
  "What do you know about our fathers?" she said.
  "They're not in Heaven, I know that," D'Amour said. "Sorry. Bad taste. Like I said, 
I've got my sources, and very soon I hope I can reveal them. In the meantime I need to 
understand what happened at the Grove better, so that we can learn by it."
  "I should have done that," Howie said softly. "I had a chance to learn from Fletcher, 
but I never took it."
  "You're Fletcher's son," D'Amour said. "His spirit's in you. It's just a question of 
listening to it "
  "He was a genius," Howie told Harry. "I really believe that. I'm sure he was out of his