seventeen or younger. I've treated several kids who've suffered serious psychological 
damage at the hands of parents who were too demanding, who pushed them too hard in their 
schoolwork, in every aspect of their intellectual and personal development. I've seen the 
wounded ones, Mr. O'Brian, and I've nursed them as best I could, and because of those 
experiences, I couldn't possibly turn around and do to my children what I've seen some 
parents do to theirs. Not that I won't make mistakes. I'm sure I will. My full share of 
them. But the one that you mentioned won't be among them."
  "That's valid," O'Brian said, nodding. "Valid and very well put. I'm sure that when I 
tell the recommendations committee what you've just said, they'll be quite satisfied on 
this point." He spotted another tiny speck on his sleeve and removed it, frowning as if 
it were not merely lint, but offal. "Another question they're bound to ask: Suppose the 
child you adopt turns out to be not only an underachiever but. . . well... basically less 
intelligent than either of you. For parents as oriented toward an intellectual life as 
you are, wouldn't you be somewhat frustrated with a child of just average-or possibly 
slightly below average- intelligence?"
  "Well, even if we were capable of having a child of our own," Paul said, "there 
wouldn't be any guarantee that he'd be a prodigy or anything of that sort. But if he was. 
. . slow. . . we'd still love him. Of course we would. And the same goes for any child we 
might adopt."
  To O'Brian, Carol said, "I think you've got too high an opinion of us. Neither of us is 
a genius, for heaven's sake! We've gotten as far as we have primarily through hard work 
and perseverance, not be-
  cause we were exceptionally bright. I wish it had come that easy, but it didn't."
  "Besides," Paul said, "you don't love a person merely because he's intelligent. It's 
his entire personality that counts, the whole package, and a lot of factors contribute to 
that package, a great many things other than just intellect."
  "Good," O'Brian said. "I'm glad to hear you feel that way. The committee will respond 
well to that answer, too."
  For the past few seconds, Carol had been aware of the distant wail of sirens. Fire 
engines. Now they were not as distant as they had been; they were rapidly growing nearer, 
louder.
  "I think maybe one of those last two bolts of lightning caused some real damage when it 
touched down," Paul said.
  O'Brian swung his chair around toward the center window, which was directly behind his 
desk. "It did sound as if it struck nearby."
  Carol looked at each of the three windows, but she couldn't see any smoke rising from 
behind the nearest rooftops. Then again, the view was blurred and visibility was reduced 
by the water-spotted panes of glass and by the curtains of mist and gray rain that 
wavered and whipped and billowed beyond the glass.
  The sirens swelled.
  "More than one truck," O'Brian said.
  The fire engines were right outside the office for a moment-at least two trucks, 
perhaps three-and then they passed, heading into the next block.
  O'Brian pushed up from his chair and stepped to the window.
  As the first sirens dwindled just a little, new ones shrieked in the street behind them.
  "Must be serious," Paul said. "Sounds as if at least two engine companies are 
responding."
  "I see smoke," O'Brian said.
  Paul rose from his chair and moved toward the windows to get a better look.
  Something's wrong here.
  That thought snapped into Carol's mind, startling her as if a whip had cracked in front 
of her face. A powerful, inexplicable current of panic surged through her, electrified 
her. She gripped the arms of her chair so tightly that one of her fingernails broke.
  Something. . . is.. . wrong.. . very wrong...
  Suddenly the air was oppressively heavy-hot, thick, as if it were not air at all but a 
bitter and poisonous gas of some kind. She tried to breathe, couldn't. There was an 
invisible, crushing weight on her chest.
  Get away from the windows!
  She tried to shout that warning, but panic had short-circuited her voice. Paul and 
O'Brian were at different windows, but they both had their backs to her, so that neither 
of them could see she had been gripped by sudden, immobilizing fear.
  Fear of what? she demanded of herself. What in the name of God am l so scared of?
  She struggled against the unreasonable terror that had locked her muscles and joints. 
She started to get up from the chair, and that was when it happened.
  A murderous barrage of lightning crashed like a volley of mortar fire, seven or eight 
tremendous bolts, perhaps more than that-she didn't count them, couldn't count them-one 
right after the other, with-
  out a significant pause between them, each fierce boom overlapping the ones before and 
after it, yet each clearly louder than its predecessors, so loud that they made her teeth 
and bones vibrate, each bolt smashing down discernibly closer to the building than had 
the bolt before it, closer to the seven-foot-high windows-the gleaming, flashing, 
rattling, now-black, now-milky, now-shining, now-blank, now-silvery, now-coppery windows.
  The sharp bursts of purple-white light produced a series of jerky, stroboscopic images 
that were burned forever into Carol's memory: Paul and O'Brian standing there, 
silhouetted against the natural fireworks, looking small and vulnerable; outside, the 
rain descending in an illusion of hesitation; wind-lashed trees heaving in a 
strobe-choppy rage; lightning blasting into one of those trees, a big maple, and then an 
ominous dark shape rising from the midst of the explosion, a torpedo like thing, spinning 
straight toward the center window (all of this transpiring in only a second or two, but 
given a queer, slow-motion quality by the flickering lightning and, after a moment, by 
the overhead electric light as well, which began to flicker, too); O'Brian throwing one 
arm up in front of his face in what appeared to be half a dozen disconnected movements; 
Paul turning toward O'Brian and reaching for him, both men like figures on a motion 
picture screen when the film slips and stutters in the projector; O'Brian lurching 
sideways; Paul seizing him by a coat sleeve, pulling him back and down toward safety 
(only a fraction of a second after the lightning splintered the maple); a huge tree limb 
bursting through the center window even as Paul was pulling O'Brian out of the way; one 
leafy branch sweeping
  across O'Brian's head, ripping his glasses loose, tossing them into the air-his face, 
Carol thought, his eyes!-and then Paul and O'Brian falling to the floor, out of sight; 
the enormous limb of the shattered maple slamming down on top of O'Brian's desk in a 
spray of water, glass, broken mullions, and smoking chips of bark; the legs of the desk 
cracking and collapsing under the brutal impact of the ruined tree.
  Carol found herself on the floor, beside her overturned chair. She couldn't remember 
falling.
  The fluorescent tubes blinked off, stayed off.
  She was lying on her stomach, one cheek pressed to the floor, staring in shock at the 
shards of glass and the torn maple leaves that littered the carpet. As lightning 
continued to stab down from the turbulent sky, wind roared through the missing window and 
stirred some of the loose leaves into a frantic, dervishlike dance; accompanied by the