and slid along, like a child pulling himself along the gutter of a swimming pool.
He was halfway down the passage when he heard Sylvie’s voice behind him, in the courtyard, among the showers. “Milo! Milo, what happened? Whose blood is this?”
He started to say “Dede’s,” but stopped it before his tongue left his palate.Dede’s blood! He looked at his fingers, and for a moment he thought that they were bloody claws…
Dede lies before him, all bloody. Her spasms are like the jerks of a severed frog leg. He looks at his fingers. The claws are just now retracting into his fingertips, the carpal pad receding into a palm, the fur on his forearm turning into the slightest blond down. He cries, and his chin shudders into a gelatinous ooze, pulling upward, shortening, then hardening again, as the fangs recede with a squeak, shrinking into his gums and out of sight. “Dede! Dede! Did I do what you wanted? Dede!” He looks around for help.
His knees have softened and recongealed to face the right direction now. The boy he was supposed to kill for Dede, the one who wouldn’t be her lover, is gone. The door has been thrown open and Milo can hear running down the street. “Dede, please say something!” He looks at his bloody fingers…
“Mine, Sylvie,” he said. “It’smy blood!” There was something hilarious about it. He started to laugh. He turned to look back toward the showers, back to where Sylvie’s voice had come from. The bit of sky he saw had cleared. There was a bright rainbow arching above the concrete wall, blue to red, and a fainter one above it, red to blue. He took one step toward the courtyard, andeverything went red, then black.
“I’m a shape-shifter, Sylvie.”
“You dope!” She was changing the dressing again. Her face hovered above him. She was biting her lip.
He could see that she was working hard not to cry.
“Where are we?” He was lying on a bed made of two chairs pushed together and covered with a white sheet. He had been undressed. He lay naked under another sheet.
“Someplace, that’s all. I took you to a doctor. It’s the first time in my whole life I missed a booking, and it’syour fault, little man.”
“Did I tell you what happened?”
“Yeah. Who needs those crooks, anyway?” She kissed him on the forehead. “Milo…you were a champ.
I can’t believe how brave you are. I’m sorry I put you in that spot.”
“I’m a shape-shifter, Sylvie. I remember everything. I breathed, and I remembered my sister, Dede. I did stuff for her. I was keys and credit cards and…money…” He stopped talking. Then he said it again: “The money!”
Sylvie looked away. “I’m sorry.” The room was dark behind her.
“It wasyou! ”
Sylvie shrugged.
“You were the money!” Milo said.
“I do stuff for Lenny sometimes. He had a press going somewhere, all set to turn out fifties, hundreds, deluxe items, Milo, really good work, but they needed some front money. I provided Lenny with a sample, is all. Like a grant application, see? They weren’t ready to print yet. He was just supposed to show it and collect the advance. Then he pays me. Anyway, that was the idea.”
“Was that LennyZorn? ”
“What?” Sylvie looked at him with a slightly shocked expression, like a hoer who has struck an unexpected rock in a well-cultivated field. “Lennywho…? Wait a minute. How do you know about that?
You meanZorn’s Lemma, don’t you? How did you hear about Zorn’s Lemma?” She stared at him, her mouth hanging open. Slowly, it closed. Her brows descended. She grabbed Milo’s arm. “You little rat!
What do you think you are, some kind of a damnedspy? You were listening in on me and the doctor, weren’t you? You knew the whole time, didn’t you?”
“You’rea shape-shifter, too,” Milo said, “you and Devore! What do you want from me?”
“God damn you, Milo! What is it with you? You think I want to hurt you? You think I want to use you?
What the hell do I need you for? I’m rich as fucking Croesus!”
“Youalready used me, Sylvie. You nearly got me killed. Why?”
“I needed some money, damn it, that’s all. Andyou’re the one who nearly got you killed. You stabbed yourself, for pity’s sake! It was a simple setup. Failsafe!”
“You blew the borders, Sylvie. The guy said they were fuzzy.”
“Well, it couldn’t beperfect, could it? The guy would think it was regular dough. You think you could do better?”
Milo knew fifty-dollar bills pretty well. Sylvie insisted on cash from her puppet show patrons, and Milo had been doing most of the collecting lately. They often paid with a fifty, which was a headache for Sylvie to break, but easy for the sponsors to carry. In his mind, Milo could see a fifty dollar bill as clearly as he could see his own hand. He couldlook right through it and all around it, on both sides. He felt the pattern of ink on its surface as if it were a network of varicose veins. He felt the rough surface like a hairy pelt, like his own hairy pelt.
Suddenly, he felt the sheets collapse around him, his skin shrivel and implode. He felt as if he were becoming all tongue, and the tongue was sucking an unripe fruit that sucked back at him, drying him out till he winked out of existence entirely. It was very quiet, very dark, very still.Milo was gone. There was only a vagueelectricity, a tension, slight at first, but it became more and more irritating, until it was unbearable. Then he burst into mundane awareness again, like a frogman bursting above the surface, gasping, shocked by the sudden light and air.
“Damn you,” Sylvie was saying. “Don’t you ever,ever do that again.”
“Don’t tell himthat,” a low voice said from behind Sylvie. A door had opened. Light poured in. Someone was walking in, silhouetted in the doorway. Milo could see only that he was a small man and, from the light flashing from his head, that he wore glasses. “His father told him that once. He won’t like to hear that, will you, Milo? Tell the truth now, Sylvie. Was he any good?”
Sylvie was fuming. She swallowed. She breathed. She calmed herself for the small man’s sake. “He’s fabulous. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“That’s what I figured.” The man came closer and put his hand on Sylvie’s shoulder. “You know who I am, don’t you, Milo?”
“Sure,” Milo said. “You’re Dr. Devore.”
“That’s right, Milo. I don’t know muchmateria medica anymore, but I can still do first aid okay. How’s the belly?”
“I’m all right. Do you ownThe Grass and Trees? ”
“You’re a smart boy, Milo. We don’t want to hurt you. We don’t want to use you. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite, you know?”
Now he made out the drapes, the rolltop, the chairs he lay on. “I jumped out that window. I was a bat. I flew down.”
“I didn’t expect that,” Devore said. “I didn’t know you were still here. I wasn’t in a position to knowanything at that moment.”
“The doctor was arainbow,” Sylvie said.
Devore clucked his tongue. “Ach! My small talent!”
“But you called Sylvie,” Milo said.
“Yes, I had already called her to tell her about you, you know? She was on her way here when she saw you fly down. She improvised.”
Milo started to tremble. He shut his eyes, then forced them open again. “Sylvie, Dr. Devore, there’s something I remembered from a long time ago…”
Devore cut in, “You don’t have to tell us this, Milo. You don’t have to say anything you’re not ready to say…”
“I killed my sister. I killed Dede.” He began to sob.
Sylvie kissed him on the forehead and cradled his head in her arms. “It wasn’t you, little man. It was a mountain lion. You were a little boy! You couldn’t control it! You didn’t know anything! Dede was anoperator! She would have used you up and thrown you away like an old Kleenex!”
Devore spoke in his low, soothing voice, the voice that held Milo just this side of panic when he retold his dreams. “We knew, Milo. All that talking in your sleep! We followed the leads. We traced your history, well, up until you disappeared, after your sister’s death.
“Milo, you were no more at fault for Dede’s death than you were for wrecking that car in your dream about the
