“Great Harlequin,” the Kid said. “Is that. . . ?”

“There’s enough raw substance there to blow a hole from here to the underworld,” the Stranger said.

The engineer turned on them again. “Get out! Get out!” he said. ”What are you doing here? You are not supposed to be here.”

“Look!” the Kid said. He pointed, but the Stranger didn’t need prompting. The train shot through the dark and suddenly the mountains to either side disappeared as it cleared the saddle, and ahead of them, and lit by the broken moon, was the approach to the Chagrin.

The true and wild Escapement opened up before them then. In a blue-black sky floated the broken moon, wreathed in a milky veil of clouds. The mountains loomed in the distance, fencing in the mighty Nikulin and half-encircling the dark body of water into which it flowed. Straight ahead, the train tracks reached an embankment over the shores of Lake Chagrin, but they did not stop. Rising over the body of the lake was a bridge, mounted on spindly stilts that rose out of the water, and beyond it the Stranger could make out the next pier, where the bridge connected to a small island floating like a dismembered eye in the northeastern part of the lake. There the bridge sloped down before rising again from the pier on the distant bank, linking the island back to the mainland, beyond, at last, the oppressive reach of the mountains.

The train thundered toward the bridge.

The aerialists gathered against the side of the mountain. Carl had pressed his palms to the black rock and communed silently with what he called the esprit de corps. Then he nodded and, seemingly satisfied, returned to their group.

He was not himself, that was all it was, Loretta tried to tell herself. She just had to do what he wanted and then everything would be all right.

Loretta watched the dark island in the lake. The two bridges rose out of it like some sort of malignant growth, not human-made at all but a natural part of the Escapement, overlaid with the train tracks, which seemed puny and fragile in comparison.

Long, taut aerial rope slides ran down from the mountainside and over the lake, terminating on the black rocks of the island. Loretta held on to the pulley and slid down, following Carl and Simone. Charlie and Eduardo followed her in turn. The small human shapes glided through the air over the dark water as the train emerged from between the Grand and Petite Philippes.