"Not while I am on duty," Luis replied. "You should know that. But please, you two go ahead." His eyes fell on Aideen and he smiled. "You are Seńorita Marley."

"Yes." Aideen rose from the table and offered her hand. Though she was physically and emotionally exhausted, something came alive when she touched the man's hand. He was attractive, but that wasn't what had stimulated her. After everything that had happened today she was too numb, too depleted to care. What he gave her was the sense of not being afraid of anything. She had always responded to that in a man.

"I'm sorry about your loss," Luis said. "But I'm glad that you are all right. You are all right?"

"Yes," she said as she sat back down. "Thanks for your concern."

"Mi delicia," he said. "My pleasure." Luis pulled over an arm chair and joined them at the table.

McCaskey resumed eating his spicy partridge. "So?"

"That smells very good," Luis said.

"It is," McCaskey said. His eyes narrowed. "You're stalling, Luis."

Luis rubbed the back of his neck. "Sí," he admitted. "I'm stalling 'big time,' as you say in America. But it's not because I have something. It's because I have nothing. Only thoughts. Ideas."

"Your thoughts are usually as good as someone else's facts," McCaskey said. "Would you care to share them?"

Luis took a drink from McCaskey's water glass. He gestured vaguely toward the window. "It's terrible out there, Darrell. Simply terrible. And it's getting worse. We've had very small anti-Basque and anti-Catalonian riots in Ávila, Segovia, and Soria."

"All Castilian regions," Aideen said.

"Yes," Luis remarked. "It doesn't appear as if the police there are doing everything they can to prevent these outbursts."

"The police are standing along racial lines," McCaskey said.

Luis nodded slowly. "I've never seen such-I'm not even certain what to call it."

"Collective insanity," Aideen said.

Luis regarded her. "I don't understand."

"It's the kind of thing psychologists have been warning about regarding the coming millennium," Aideen said. "The fear that we're all going into it but most of us won't be coming out alive. Result: a sense of mortality which brings out panic. Fear. Violence."

Luis looked at her and pointed. "Yes, that's right. It's as though everyone has caught some kind of mental and physical fever. My people who have gone to those regions say there's a sense of hatred and excitement you can almost feel. Very strange."

McCaskey frowned. "I hope you're not saying that Martha's shooting is part of a mass psychotic episode."

Luis waved his hand dismissively. "No, of course not. I'm merely remarking that something strange is happening out there. Something I've never felt before." He leaned forward, toward the Egg. "There is also something brewing, my friends. Something that I think is very well planned."

"What kind of "something"?" McCaskey asked.