walking in the direction he was called, barely aware of one foot moving ahead of the 
other. There were no thoughts in his head now, except the Art and its getting, and even 
that ambition came and went.
  So, finally, did the desert itself. Somewhere towards evening, he came to a place where 
even the simplest facts-the ground beneath him, the darkening sky above his head-were in 
doubt. He wasn't even sure if he was walking. The absence of everything was pleasant, but 
it didn't last. The summons must have pulled him on without his even being aware of its 
call, because the night he'd left became a sudden day, and he found himself 
standing-alive, again; Randolph Ernest Jaffe again-in a desert barer even than the one 
he'd left. It was early morning here. The sun not yet high, but beginning to warm the 
air, the sky perfectly clear.
  Now he felt pain, and sickness, but the pull in his gut was irresistible. He had to 
stagger on though his whole body was wreckage. Later, he remembered passing through a 
town, and seeing a steel tower standing in the middle of the wilderness. But that was 
only when the journey had ended, at a simple stone hut, the door of which opened to him 
as the last vestiges of his strength left him, and he fell across its threshold.
  
  III
  The door was closed when he came round, but his mind wide open. On the other side of a 
guttering fire sat an old man with doleful, slightly stupid features, like those of a 
clown who'd worn and wiped off fifty years of makeup, his pores enlarged and greasy, his 
hair, what was left of it, long and gray. He was sitting cross-legged. Occasionally, 
while Jaffe worked up the energy to speak, the old man raised a buttock and loudly passed 
wind.
  "You found your way through," he said, after a time. "I thought you were going to die 
before you made it. A lot of people have. It takes real will."
  "Through to where?" Jaffe managed to ask.
  "We're in a Loop. A loop in time, encompassing a few minutes. I tied it, as a refuge. 
It's the only place I'm safe."
  "Who are you?"
  "My name's Kissoon."
  "Are you one of the Shoal?"
  The face beyond the fire registered surprise.
  "You know a great deal."
  "No. Not really. Just bits and pieces."
  "Very few people know about the Shoal."
  "I know of several," said Jaffe.
  "Really?" said Kissoon, his tone toughening. "I'd like their names."
  "I had letters from them..." Jaffe said, but faltered when he realized he no longer 
knew where he'd left them, those precious clues that had brought him through so much hell 
and heaven.
  "Letters from whom?" Kissoon said.
  "People who know...who guess...about the Art."
  "Do they? And what do they say about it?"
  Jaffe shook his head. "I've not made sense of it yet," he said. "But I think there's a 
sea-"
  "There is," said Kissoon. "And you'd like to know where to find it, and how to be 
there, and how to have power from it."
  "Yes. I would."
  "And in return for this education?" Kissoon said. "What are you offering?"
  "I don't have anything."
  "Let me be the judge of that," Kissoon said, turning his eyes up to the roof of the hut 
as though he saw something in the smoke that roiled there.
  "OK," Jaffe said. "Whatever I've got that you want. You can have it."
  "That sounds fair."
  "I need to know. I want the Art."
  "Of course. Of course."
  "I've had all the living I need," Jaffe said.
  Kissoon's eyes came back to rest on him.
  "Really? I doubt that."
  "I want to get...I want to get..." (What? he thought. What do you want?) "Explanations, 
" he said.
  "Well, where to begin?"
  "The sea," Jaffe said.
  "Ah, the sea."
  "Where is it?"
  "Have you ever been in love?" Kissoon replied.
  "Yes. I think so."
  "Then you've been to Quiddity twice. Once the first night you slept out of the womb. 
The second occasion the night you lay beside that woman you loved. Or man, was it?" He 
laughed. "Whichever."
  "Quiddity is the sea."
  "Quiddity is the sea. And in it are islands, called the Ephemeris."
  "I want to go there," Jaffe breathed.
  "You will. One more time, you will."
  "When?"
  "The last night of your life. That's all we ever get. Three dips in the dream-sea. Any 
less, and we'd be insane. Any more-"
  "And?"
  "And we wouldn't be human."
  "And the Art?"
  "Ah, well...opinions differ about that."
  "Do you have it?"
  "Have it?"
  "This Art. Do you have it? Can you do it? Can you teach me?"
  "Maybe."
  "You're one of the Shoal," Jaffe said. "You've got to have it, right?"
  "One?" came the reply. "I'm the last. I'm the only."
  "So share it with me. I want to be able to change the world."
  "Just a little ambition."
  "Don't fuck with me!" Jaffe said, the suspicion growing in him that he was being taken 
for a fool.
  "I'm not going to leave empty-handed, Kissoon. If I get the Art I can enter Quiddity, 
right? That's the way it works."
  "Where'd you get your information?"
  "Isn't it?"
  "Yes. And I say again: where'd you get your information?"
  "I can put the clues together. I'm still doing it." He grinned as the pieces fitted in 
his head. "Quiddity's somehow behind the world, isn't it? And the Art lets you step 
through, so you can be there any time you like. The Finger in the Pie."