lurch before beginning its final ascent. Three minutes later, they swung up into the arms of the receiving station, bumped softly, and eased to a stop. She stepped out with the other passengers onto a platform hung out over the nearly vertical slope. Just above was a small visitor center topped by the huge red wheels of the tram machinery, paused now; to the left lay a series of red-painted wooden decks, joined by stairs and ramps and cantilevered out over the mile-high cliff.
Below was the whole world.
The space and scope and light walloped Cree. She bellied up to the railing, feeling as if she'd stepped out on an airplane wing. When she fought off the vertigo and remembered to inhale, she found the air sweet and crisp and twenty degrees cooler than at the bottom.
The tourists had mostly dispersed by the time she pulled herself away from the rail and scanned the platforms for Mason and Lupe. She spotted thern on the farthest deck, past the restaurant, and began walking the meandering ramps toward them. Mason was staring outward at the grand view, but Lupe's round head swiveled as Cree approached. Wordlessly, she turned Mason's chair so he faced Cree.
He looked Cree up and down with eyes disconcertingly quick in his slack, fleshy face. After a long moment he tipped his head back toward Lupe. 'I told you she'd ripen well! A fine, lush bit of woman flesh if there ever was one. I am always right in these things. Always.' His voice had once been a rich and dignified baritone, but it hadn't survived the ruin of the rest of him.
Lupe regarded Cree disapprovingly, as if blaming her for Mason's lack of propriety.
'Hello, Lupe,' Cree said. 'Hello, Mason.' Some physical contact seemed called for, but Lupe offered no opening, and the thought of touching Mason repelled her. When she put out her hand, Mason brought it briefly to his lips.
He wore an expensive charcoal suit tailored to minimize his growing deformity, but it couldn't hide the deterioration that had taken place since last she'd seen him. Though he was no older than his early sixties and his hair was still mostly black, his big body appeared to be collapsing in upon itself. He lurked deeper in his chair, chin nearly riding on his chest. His high, square forehead and strong jaw were well formed but now only made him all the more grotesque, a parody of the handsome man he'd once been. A thin green cylinder of oxygen was strapped to the chair, Cree noticed, its clear plastic tube and nose feeder looped on one of the handles.
'Your lecture was superb,' Mason gurgled. Looking up at her exposed his face to the sky, and the light seemed to give him discomfort. 'You struck precisely the right tone for speaking to the great unwashed of academia in terms their rigidly compartmented little intellects could grasp. Yet never the bald, craven appeal to the popular taste we see so much of these days.' The big head twisted to the side again and he said to Lupe, as if scolding her, 'I told you she would mature. I told you she would shine!'
'So what brings you to Albuquerque? Surely not the conference-'
'I live not far away now-Santa Fe. To the extent that I can be said to live' Mason chuckled. 'Or to do so in any one place. I am mostly between here and Switzerland. Returning to Geneva tomorrow, in fact. One of the reasons I contacted you. It was most fortuitous, your coming at this time. Still enjoying Seattle? Your little outfit, what's it called…?'
'Psi Research Associates.'
'— is it doing well? Doing a brisk business in ghastliness?'
'Yes.'
'And your partner-the engineer, the physicist…?'
'Edgar Mayfield.'
'Yes, our good Dr. Mayfield. Has he recorded the irrefutable physical evidence he so ardently desires?' Mason's expression conveyed his low opinion of Edgar's technological approach to paranormal research.
'Physical evidence, quite a bit. Irrefutable-that's up for argument.'
'But he hasn't succeeded in winning your heart with his efforts, has he. Because, one can safely assume, you're still searching for your dead husband and remaining chaste as a statue of the Virgin Mary.' A glint of malicious amusement lit the hooded eyes.
Cree tried not to stiffen. 'You know, Mason, I've never considered your sadism to be your most admirable characteristic.'
'And just what would that be, Lucretia-my most admirable characteristic?'
Cree was tempted to say something hurtful. But, as she'd inventoried on her way up, she did admire a great many things about him. Even now, even as he did his best to be offensive, she could feel something noble in him- synesthetically, it came across as a rich crimson-and-peach- toned glow, steady and fine, just visible beneath the blackened, warted surface of his affect. Mason was the ultimate frog prince, always awakening her desire to free him from his enchantment, too ugly to bear to kiss. He was a hideous, aging man being eaten alive by some unknown malady, collapsing upon himself in a wheelchair, and he broke her heart.
In any case, rule one with Mason was you couldn't let him get under your skin. The only way to get by was to stay yourself. Show him you were above his provocations, which, she had to believe, were nothing more than oblique affirmations of affection and intimacy.
She touched his hand. 'That you're easily disarmed by candor and affection. It suggests you have a human streak in you somewhere. That you're not the monster you think you are.'
Lupe snorted at that, and Mason joined her with a chortle, chin hard against his chest. When he recovered, his big face hardened quickly.
'Lupe, I will need a moment to speak with Cree in confidence.'
Lupe's mahogany eyes locked accusingly on Cree's before she took her hands from the wheelchair grips and removed herself to the railing.
'If you wouldn't mind, Cree-' Mason gestured toward the far corner of the platform, an acute angle jutting well out over the cliff face.
Cree rolled him away from Lupe, feeling the woman's incomprehensible resentment. At the corner, she stopped the chair and came around to face Mason, leaving him oriented toward the vast space. Far below, another tramcar was inching up past the giant blue gantry.
'Do you know I can still stand?' he asked conversationally. He didn't look at her, just stared out at the bigness.
'No. I-'
'I could grab the railing and pull myself up right now. Not for long, of course.' His voice was flat, almost disinterested, and Cree wondered why he was telling her this. 'I could even throw myself over. In fact, I come here whenever I'm in Albuquerque just to savor that knowledge.'
She gave him an exasperated smile. 'Mason, how about skipping the high drama? Just tell me why we're here.'
'Do you know why I might want to do that?'
'I can think of a lot of reasons why someone might-'
' No-why would I, Mason Ambrose, choose to fling myself over and stain the rocks down there with my brain matter?' Now his eyes were on her, and they seemed very deep, like holes to some subterranean pit. Whatever he wanted from her, his intensity was disturbing. Forty feet away, Lupe stood at the rail, watching them from the side of her eyes. Beyond her, the tramcar slid silently up the cable.
'You're trying to upset me. But it won't happen. Sorry.'
He shook his head. 'Come along, Lucretia! You're the most talented empath I've ever encountered. You know emotions and longings. You see them. What do you see in your old mentor?'
She appraised him. There were so many possibilities: that living as a toad in a wheelchair had become intolerable, or that by throwing himself over the edge he'd have some control over himself, otherwise denied him in so many ways. That his noble and good parts wanted to be free of the awful things in him. That his disease was progressing and promised a life of unbearable pain.
Possible, she decided, but too obvious, not what he wanted from her now.
'I don't know,' she said finally. 'Maybe that you want to know what happens after-what's on the other side. That your curiosity is that strong.'
Mason looked flattered and proud of her in a proprietary way, the folds around his mouth puckering. 'Oh, you unabashed romantic. You poor naive idealist.' He turned his head to frown across the deck at his assistant, and his voice turned into a snarl: 'What makes you think I wouldn't do it just to get away from Lupe? Or to punish her? Look
