She looked toward those doors with the sort of lip-biting dismay which may escalate into panic at a single rough word or angry look.

She’d been upstairs for a little over an hour, and during that time the lobby’s early-afternoon lull had ended. Half a dozen taxis from La Guardia and Kennedy had pulled up in front of the hotel at roughly the same time; so had a Japanese tour-bus from Newark Airport. The tour had originated in Sapporo and consisted of fifty couples with reservations at the Plaza-Park. Now the lobby was rapidly filling with chattering people. Most had dark, slanted eyes and shiny black hair, and were wearing oblong objects around their necks on straps. Every now and then one would raise one of these objects and point it at someone else. There would be a brilliant flash, laughter, and cries of Domo! Domo! There were three lines forming at the desk. The beautiful woman who’d checked Mia in during quieter times had been joined by two other clerks, all of them working like mad. The high-ceilinged lobby echoed with laughter and mingled conversation in some strange tongue that sounded to Mia like the twittering of birds. The banks of mirror-glass added to the general confusion by making the lobby seem twice as full as it actually was.

Mia cringed back, wondering what to do.

“Front!” yelled a desk clerk, and banged a bell. The sound seemed to shoot across Mia’s confused thoughts like a silver arrow. “Front, please!”

A grinning man—black hair slicked against his skull, yellow skin, slanting eyes behind round spectacles—came rushing up to Mia, holding one of the oblong flash-things. Mia steeled herself to kill him if he attacked.

“Ah-yoo takea pickcha me and my wife?”

Offering her the flash-thing. Wanting her to take it from him. Mia cringed away, wondering if it ran on radiation, if the flashes might hurt her baby.

Susannah! What do I do?

No answer. Of course not, she really couldn’t expect Susannah’s help after what had just happened, but …

The grinning man was still thrusting the flash-machine at her. He looked a trifle puzzled, but mostly undaunted. “Yooo take-ah pickcha, preese?” And put the oblong thing in her hand. He stepped back and put his arm around a lady who looked exactly like him except for her shiny black hair, which was cut across her forehead in what Mia thought of as a wench-clip. Even the round glasses were the same.

“No,” Mia said. “No, cry pardon … no.” The panic was very close now and very bright, whirling and gibbering right in front of her

(yooo take-ah pickcha, we kill-ah baby)

and Mia’s impulse was to drop the oblong flasher on the floor. That might break it, however, and release the deviltry that powered the flashes.

She put it down carefully instead, smiling apologetically at the astonished Japanese couple (the man still had his arm around his wife), and hurried across the lobby in the direction of the little shop. Even the piano music had changed; instead of the former soothing melodies, it was pounding out something jagged and dissonant, a kind of musical headache.