the trunks of the remoter trees were pewter, then iron, then black. Beyond the jade-black grass and the black trees it was pure dark, as if the entrance to the park were a ring of forest that surrounded a lake of black, filled with the rustle of leaves and an unnameable, underlying sound that must have been insects and something else. Beyond the visible woods lay the sound of some limitless attention.
Lucas wondered if this might be where the dead resided, the dead who were not caught up in machinery. Here was grass, here were trees. Here was a rustling, alert silence far from the world of the living, with its lights and its music, its windows full of goods. Lucas gathered his courage and went forward, as he might have dived into water of uncertain depth and coldness, water that might or might not harbor fish and creatures that were not fish but lived in water, creatures that would be eyes and teeth and sudden movement. He had never seen such dark. It was never so, not even in the bedroom with the lamp extinguished, not even when he closed his eyes.
The park as Lucas walked into it, however, was not as dark as it had appeared. It was not pitch-dark. The grass beneath his feet was impenetrably black but steady; the trees were black but lesser black, their shapes discernible against a field of blackness. He felt as if he carried with him some faint illumination, a candle that was his own seeing and hearing, his human presence.
Something was here, among the trees. It deepened as he walked into it.
Presently he arrived at a stone balustrade, with a broad, curving staircase descending on either end. He went down the stairs. And there, in the middle of a dark plaza, stood an enormous figure. It spread its wings, touched faintly by moonglow. Its face was canted down, toward Lucas. It seemed for a moment that he had found the park's avenging mother, the entity that waited, watching and listening, that had dreamed the park into being and did not like to have its sleep interrupted. Lucas trembled. He made as if to turn and run, though he thought that if he did, the figure would stir its wings, take flight, and snatch him up as easily as a terrier takes a rat.
In another moment, he understood that it was a statue, only a statue. He drew nearer. It was a stone angel, standing on a pedestal above an immense stone bowl of water. He saw that the angel was severe and contemplative, that she had blank and sorrowful eyes, that she had turned from heaven and looked down at the earth.
He looked up. There, beyond the angel's arm, were the stars.
He had reached the heart of the park, and what the angel guarded what she had wanted to show him, what Walt had sent him to find was stars. Then he understood that here, so far from the city proper, the smoke was dispersed, and the stars were visible. He nearly lost his balance, looking up. The stars sparked, brilliant and unsteady on a field of ebony. There were thousands of them.
He knew them, some of them, from the map in the schoolroom. There was the Great Horse. There was the Hunter. There, so faint he could not be sure, but there, he thought, were the Pleiades, a cluster of minor stars, the seven, a circle of phosphorescence.
He stood for some time, watching. He had never imagined this star-specked stillness. Had the farm in Dingle been like this? He couldn't know, for the farm was the past; it had existed before he was born. He knew it from his parents' memories as the place where the hens had died, where the potatoes had died. It was what his mother meant by heaven: Dingle with the hunger removed. He wondered now if it had stood under stars like this. If it had, she would naturally believe that the dead went there.
A sensation rose in him, a high tingling of his blood. There came a wave, a wind, that recognized him, that did not love him or hate him. He felt what he knew as the rising of his self, the shifting innerness that yearned and feared, that was more familiar to him than anything could ever be. He knew that an answering substance gathered around him, emanating from the trees and the stars.
He stood staring at the constellations. Walt had sent him here, to find this, and he understood. He thought he understood. This was his heaven. It was not Broadway or the horse on wheels. It was grass and silence; it was a field of stars. It was what the book told him, night after night. When he died he would leave his defective body and turn into grass. He would be here like this, forever. There was no reason to fear it, because it was part of him. What he'd thought of as his emptiness, his absence of soul, was only a yearning for this.
At the apartment, his parents remained behind their door. Lucas didn't venture in. He thought it would be better to let them rest. With rest, they might yet become themselves again.
He went into his bedroom and read the book.
Lucas lay in his bed with St. Brigid above him and Emily across the way, eating behind her curtain. He slept. If he dreamed, his dreams were lost upon awakening.
His parents were still quiet behind their door. He decided it was better to leave them. He couldn't help them anymore. He could help only Catherine.
He was waiting before her building when she emerged in her blue dress. She was not glad to see him. Her face settled into an expression of sorrowful blankness, like the angel's in the park. She said, 'Hello, Lucas.' She turned and started off in the direction of the Mannahatta Company. He fell in alongside her.
'Catherine,' he said, 'you must not go to work today.'
'You've used up my patience, Lucas. I have no time for you anymore.'
'Come away with me. Let me take you away.'
She walked on. In a fury of desperation, before he knew what he did, he took her skirt in his hand and tugged at it. 'Please,' he said. 'Please.'
'Leave me, Lucas,' she said, in a voice more awful for its measured calm. 'You can do nothing for me. I can do nothing for you.'
He stood still and watched helplessly as she went east, to her machine. He waited until she had traveled a distance, then followed. As they neared the sewing shop, other women in the same blue dresses gathered in the street. He watched as Catherine went among them. He watched as she went through the door. He remained a while. More women in blue dresses passed him and entered the building. He imagined Catherine mounting the stairs, going to her machine. He saw her work the treadle. He knew the machine would be gladdened by her touch. He knew it had been waiting patiently through the night, singing to itself, thinking of Catherine.
She could not be allowed to remain there. She had no idea of the danger she was in. He stood helplessly before the building as the last of the women entered. He was too small and strange; he could do nothing more to intercede.
No. There was something he could do. There was one thing.
The trick would be to stop his machine before it had eaten more than his hand. He had to figure stealthily as he worked. He couldn't let the others see him in his calculations. He knew he could not put one hand under the wheel and pull the lever with his other hand. The distance was too far. But he thought that if he stretched himself forward, if he lay half upon the belt, he could pull the lever with his foot, and stop the wheel in time.
Lucas put off from moment to moment that which he had to do. It was easy, it was fatally easy, to keep on working. Even now, the waking sleep of his work life wanted him. He aligned and clamped. He pulled, pulled again, inspected. Even now he felt his resolve slipping away, and not only his resolve. His self was diminishing. He was becoming what he did. He began to think, as an hour passed, that he had dreamed of Catherine and her plight, had
