Margherita collapsed by the edge of the great lightless pool. Morituri knelt beside her while she cried. It was terrible. What had brought him there, what had understood and moved in so automatically, fell back now to sleep. His conditioning, his verbal, ranked and uniformed self took over again. He knelt shivering, more afraid than he’d ever been in his life. It was she who led their way back to the Spa.

She and Sigmund left Bad Karma that night. The boy may have been too frightened, the light too faint, Morituri himself may have had strong protectors, for God knows he was visible enough there—but no police came. “It never occurred to me to go to them. In my heart, I knew she had murdered. You may condemn me for it. But I saw what I’d be handing her over to, and it came to the same thing, in official custody or not, you see.” The next day was 1 September. There was no longer any way for children to vanish mysteriously.

The forenoon has gone dark. Rain spits in under the awning. The bowl of porridge has stayed after all untouched in front of Morituri. Slothrop is sweating, staring at the bright remains of an orange. “Listen,” it has occurred to his agile brain, “what about Bianca, then? Is she going to be safe with that Greta, do you think?”

Frisking his great mustache, “What do you mean? Are you asking, ‘Can she be saved?’”

“Oh, pip, pip, old Jap, come off it—”

“Look, what can you save her from?” His eyes are prying Slothrop away from his comfort. Rain is drumming now on the awnings, spilling in clear lacework from the edges.

“But wait a minute. Oh, shit, that woman yesterday, in that Sprudelhof—”

“Yes. Remember Greta also saw you coming up out of the river. Now think of all the folklore among these people about radioactivity—these travelers from spa to spa, season after season. It’s grace. It’s the holy waters of Lourdes. This mysterious radiation that can cure so much—might it be the ultimate cure?”

“Uh…”

“I watched her face as you came aboard. I was with her at the edge of one radioactive night. I know what she saw this time. One of those children—preserved, nourished by the mud, the radium, growing taller and stronger while slowly, viscous and slow, the currents bore him along underground, year by year, until at last, grown to manhood, he came to the river, came up out of the black radiance of herself to find her again, Shekhinah, bride, queen, daughter. And mother. Motherly as sheltering mud and glowing pitchblende—”

Almost directly overhead, thunder suddenly breaks in a blinding egg of sound. Somewhere inside the blast, Slothrop has murmured, “Quit fooling.”

“Are you going to risk finding out?”

Who is this, oh sure it’s a Jap ensign, looking at me like this. But where are Bianca’s arms, her defenseless mouth…. “Well in a day or two we’ll be in Swinemünde, right?” talking to keep from—get up from the table then, you asshole—