“Hello, are you there? Gods, are you there? PLEASE TELL ME YOU’RE STILL THERE!”

“I’m here,” the man’s voice said calmly. “Shall we start again, Mia, daughter of none? Or shall I ring off until you’re feeling … a little more yourself?”

“No! No, don’t do that, don’t do that I beg!”

“You won’t interrupt me again? Because there’s no reason for unseemliness.”

“I promise!”

“My name is Richard P. Sayre.” A name Susannah knew, but from where? “You know where you need to go, don’t you?”

“Yes!” Eager now. Eager to please. “The Dixie Pig, Sixty-first and Lexingworth.”

“Lexington,” Sayre said. “Odetta Holmes can help you find it, I’m sure.”

Susannah wanted to scream That’s not my name! She kept silent instead. This Sayre would like her to scream, wouldn’t he? Would like her to lose control.

“Are you there, Odetta?” Pleasantly teasing. “Are you there, you interfering bitch?”

She kept silent.

“She’s in there,” Mia said. “I don’t know why she’s not answering, I’m not holding her just now.”

“Oh, I think I know why,” Sayre said indulgently. “She doesn’t like that name, for one thing.” Then, in a reference Susannah didn’t get: “‘Don’t call me Clay no more, Clay my slave name, call me Muhammad Ali!’ Right, Susannah? Or was that after your time? A little after, I think. Sorry. Time can be so confusing, can’t it? Never mind. I have something to tell you in a minute, my dear. You won’t like it very much, I fear, but I think you should know.”

Susannah kept silent. It was getting harder.

“As for the immediate future of your chap, Mia, I’m surprised you’d even feel it necessary to ask,” Sayre told her. He was a smoothie, whoever he was, his voice containing exactly the right amount of outrage. “The King keeps his promises, unlike some I could name. And, issues of our integrity aside, think of the practical issues! Who else should have the keeping of perhaps the most important child to ever be born … including Christ, including Buddha, including the Prophet Muhammad? To who else’s breast, if I may be crude, would we trust his suck?”

Music to her ears, Susannah thought dismally. All the things she’s been thirsting to hear. And why? Because she is Mother.

“You’d trust him to me!” Mia cried. “Only to me, of course! Thank you! Thank you!”

Susannah spoke at last. Told her not to trust him. And was, of course, roundly ignored.

“I’d no more lie to you than break a promise to my own mother,” said the voice on the phone. (Did you ever have one, sugar? Detta wanted to know.) “Even though the truth sometimes hurts, lies have a way of coming back to bite us, don’t they? The truth of this matter is you won’t have your chap for long, Mia, his childhood won’t be like that of other children, normal children—”

“I know! Oh, I know!”

“—but for the five years you do have him … or perhaps seven, it might be as many as seven … he’ll have the best of everything. From you, of course, but also from us. Our interference will be minimal—”